SnoopyStyle Alcoholic private investigator John Rosow (Michael Shannon) is hired by Miss Charley (Amy Ryan) to follow a man on a train from Chicago to Los Angeles. The man is traveling with a kid who turns out to be one of the missing presumed dead during 9/11. Rosow has suppose to him bring back to his wife. There are a couple of supposed FBI agents and a woman who sleeps with him but hiding an agenda.This is a meandering hard-boiled private eye story. Michael Shannon is good as this character. It's not terribly intense. There's only so much that Shannon can do with the material especially if he has to do it as a drunk for the whole movie. The style reminds me of some of the 70s attempt to revive the 50s noir. I like that style but the story needs a lot more tension.

Ed-Shullivan A good 7 out of 10 rating.This film noir was perfect casting for Michael Shannon in the lead role as an ex New York cop turned private investigator named John Rosow who can't seem to get through a day without his flask filled with booze. The film opens with John being woken up from another of his drunken stupors to the sound of his ringing phone and a job offer that starts in two hours if he can get his butt down to New York's central train station. His assignment is to trail a person that he has no information about, not even the suspects' name. As soon as the employer hangs up an attractive woman named Miss Charley suddenly appears at John's apartment door with his train ticket, a picture of the suspect he is expected to trail and a cash advance on his payday. Miss Charley is played to perfection by Amy Ryan who is best known for her earlier role as officer Beatrice BEADIE Russell in the highly rated crime series THE WIRE. John takes the assignment simply for the stack of cash being offered and zooms off to the train station.As the movie progresses (as so does John's drinking binges) John learns a little bit more each day about the suspect including his name which is Harold Fullmer played by Frank Wood. John also wonders why two FBI agents are also interested in trailing his suspect, and the agents are now trailing John. The film was written and directed by Noah Buschel who created a 1940's film noir style for the film with the opening scene designed in a black and white frame and with his star actor Michael Shannon narrating his story as was the style for the day for the 40's and 50's film noir.I loved the slower pace there were no big brawls and no over the top car crashes or explosions, just great acting and an intriguing storyline that keeps the audience guessing what is going to happen next. There were also some excellent co-star performances by actors John Ventimiglia, Amy Ryan, Paul Sparks and Margaret Colin. I thought the title The Missing Person was appropriate as the hunted as well as the hunter were in some way both missing persons. The ending was well done and I don't want to give anything away because it may spoil the film for your viewing. My recommendation would be to watch this when you just want to relax and be intrigued by a good storyline and some great performances. I give the film a good 7 out of 10 rating.

GManfred Can't tell you how hard I tried to like "The Missing Person". Right off the bat, you can see it is an imitation noir, an attempt to recall a bygone era in movies, and they got a down-at-the-heels, alcoholic 'private eye' to be the hero - and being a likable sort, you root for him. The color is not splashy but almost a sepia, two-tone effect that works well with the mood of the picture.However.As noted by several reviewers, it takes forever to get going but then maintains the same slow, plodding pace throughout the film. And the hero, played by Michael Shannon, severely underplays his part and seems to be in a stupor in some scenes, so sluggish does he appear. That may be what the director was looking for, but he is at times in danger of fading into the wallpaper and losing command of what are essentially his scenes. Lastly, too much plot explanation was saved for the final scenes and became almost too much to absorb; It makes you wonder if you got the gist of the story.I hope this was a learning experience for director Buschel and I applaud his effort and concept. I hope he makes more and better pictures. And I hope he is not offended by the fact that a highlight of the movie for me was Thelonious Monk's version of an old standard, "I Don't Stand A Ghost Of A Chance", played over the final credits. It was perfection, a haunting rendition played slowly and using very few fingers.

Dan Franzen (dfranzen70) The Missing Person is, on the surface, about an alcoholic ex-cop who's assigned to find the titular character and bring him home to his wife. But it's much more than that; it's a look at how the survivors of the September 11 attacks continued with their lives, post-tragedy, and it's about man's powers of self redemption. It's a character study in the guise of a film noir mystery.John Rosow, played by Michael Shannon, is contacted by a mysterious client to follow a man from Chicago to LA, find out what he's up to, and then bring him home to New York. But Rosow's investigation unearths more than a simple retrieval mission, and ultimately it reveals a heck of a lot about him and his past, particularly in how he has dealt with losing his wife during the 9/11 attacks.Because, you see - and you will, early on, no spoiler here - the missing person is one of the many who simply were never heard from again after the attacks on the Twin Towers. Many of those people were (and are) presumed dead, but some may have behaved like Harold Fullmer (Frank Wood) and moved elsewhere to get on with their lives anew. Harold's up to something, but luckily for us it's not something nefarious (that would have been too obvious, certainly), and soon Rosow is faced with a moral quandary - should he let Harold stay where he is, or is he obligated to bring him back east? Shannon is superb, a craggy, world-weary Johnny Law who's been leaning on the drink for far too long. We've seen these oversoaked cops before, the ones who are either cold-shocked by tragedy or just numbed to everyday horrors. But below the seen-it-all surface, Rosow has plenty of issues, plenty of bad memories, and plenty of guilt.Thus there are dovetailing plots - the apprehension of Fullmer and the redemption of Rosow. Writer Noah Buschel, who also directed, has crafted a rich, crusty mystery thriller into a psychological study of the long-term effects of a truly horrific day in American history, particularly on individuals; in this case, one man flees his memories, while the other embraces them nightly.I wanted to mention this movie in particular, because it's certainly not one that most people have heard of (it's now on DVD). It's a quiet, subtle look at an event that was itself nothing but. It's well written and insightful into the psyche of a survivor, and it includes a commanding performance by Shannon (nominated for an Oscar for Revolutionary Road, overshadowing both Kate Winslet and the overacting of Leonardo Dicaprio) along with strong support from Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone).