Product: Disappeared (2004)
Rating: 3.0
Disappointed, Misled
The jacket of this DVD is very misleading. Its picture of a girl's purple, disembodied head against the background of a father's anguished figure - suggests a serial killer, or at the very least, a chilling series of abductions. The movie actually deals with neither."Disappeared" is in reality just a sort of flat following of a father's quest through the back alleys of Istanbul as he attempts to locate his daughter. There is the possibility that she has been diverted into the hellishness of the sex slave trade, or that she has met some other miserable end. But the movie fails to capitalize on any such lurid possibilities. It boils down to Ray Winstone confronting a roundabout, confusing series of Turkish underworld figures and wheelers-and-dealers, trying to gather leads to his daughter's whereabouts.Winstone, who although not a stereotypically handsome leading man, still usually commands the screen whenever he appears. Not here though. Here he is reduced to alternating between annoying whimpers and annoying, counterproductive rages.There are a few saving graces about this film. We do get glimpses of what Istanbul's exotic byways are like - with their stone pavements, labyrinthine curves, and the stuccoed facades that line them. I was once or twice reminded of the famous de Chirico painting in which an ominous shadow looms onto the narrow, stuccoed gallery of such a Byzantine back street. Who or what is about to come around that corner at you?But again, the film itself doesn't deliver on these cinematic suggestions of intrigue and menace. It's neither suspense nor outright family drama, but a sort of nondescript meandering in the gray zone between the two.