Fresh on the dusty trail blazed by Kevin Costner's Open Range earlier this year, Ron Howard delivers his own entry into the revived-genre sweepstakes -- The Missing. I've heard Howard always wanted to make his own Western, and now he has, but, unfortunately, he's brought nothing new to the table. His competent movie-making skills have been used to tell a standard kidnap-and-rescue story. Characters go through what you expect them to. Stuff happens because it needs to. We get nice scenery. And, in the end, it all smells like a rubber stamp.

Doing their best to disguise the stamp are acting veterans Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones. Blanchett plays Dr. Gilkeson, Medicine Woman -- but you can call her Maggie. She's a physician living happily with her two daughters when   a visit from her wandering father (Jones) causes her deep-seated anger toward him to resurface. Blanchett once again shows her chameleon-like skills and plays Maggie as tough, determined, unforgiving, and prejudiced; meanwhile, Jones looks appropriately weathered, physically and emotionally, as a character who has adopted Native American beliefs during his restless, travel-filled life, and now works his way toward redemption for his past negligences. Both actors do fine jobs, but don't really have anywhere to go with these limited characters. Maggie stays angry for most of the movie -- I think she smiles twice in the whole thing -- because the audience must never forget that she is very very mad at her dad. Dad is sympathetic and easily gains forgiveness from the audience for whatever he's done, but he spends the movie clearly finding a way to forgive himself, and goes through all the inner struggle that comes with that territory.

The characters are indicative of what The Missing covers -- territory already tread upon. This movie will doubtlessly draw comparisons to The Searchers, and Howard might cite that John Ford classic as an influence, but, if it truly is, then its surface qualities were the most influential. A daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) is kidnapped by Indians, our heroes are hot on their trail, and the vistas are gorgeous. But themes of alienation, racism, and the clash of old and new ideas are either only touched upon or not very convincingly explored.

An example of the problem is illustrated by a significant scene involving the film's main villain, a renegade Native American (Eric Schweig) who was recruited by American armies for the Civil War and has since led his men to criminal ways. He also happens to be a witch. About halfway into the film, he employs voodoo to try to eliminate the good doctor Maggie. Because Maggie has strongly remained faithful to her Christian upbringing and scientific medical knowledge, she has rejected every attempt by her father to protect her and her youngest daughter (Jenna Boyd) through the use of spiritual charms. While caught in the witch's spell, Maggie suffers as her father and his Native American friend (Jay Tavare) work  counter-magic. She recovers, but doesn't realize she was under a magical spell, nor would she have reason to think the non-medical spirits saved her. Add to this the fact that magic had to be used in the first place in setting up some support for the acceptance of extra-Christian cultures, and one could conclude that making a convincing case for diversity tolerance isn't one of the movie's particular strengths.

For that matter, neither is character color. I was reminded how one-way Blanchett and Jones's characters were when Tavare's character showed up. He knows Maggie's father well enough to be able to carry on humorous banter with him. The markedly different energy this man brought to the story was welcome -- more about being a person, less about getting from point A to point B in a regular character relationship development. Sadly, Tavare's interlude is brief, and then we're back to the estranged father-daughter dynamic, which plays to its inevitable conclusion.

The Missing doesn't lack entertainment value. It's handsome and has a fair share of action and suspense. Welcome elements in the movie include Blanchett as a heroic woman of the West and the blend of Native Americans and Caucasian Americans on the forces of both good and evil.  But, as a whole, the film is rote -- with well-worn elements, it feels like one of those action movies you see being repeated on cable TV, completing its plot-point spectrum with failed escape attempts, botched rescue attempts, and that corny moment when the glint of reflection from a pair of binoculars gives away our heroes' secret location.

Looking up from the dust, The Missing wouldn't even find itself on the same trail as Open Range -- a Western about characters with human energy I could recognize.  Unfortunately, characters in The Missing are recognizable only as familiar movie standards. And that's a big difference. 

(Released by Columbia Pictures and rated "R" for violence.)

Review also posted at www.windowtothemovies.com.