Missing (1982)

The critic highlights Jack Lemmon's heartbreaking performance as a conservative American businessman searching for his missing son amid the Chilean coup. The film powerfully reveals the conscience of a nation confronting its government's complicity in the horrors.

Canby hails it as Costa-Gavras's most beautifully achieved political melodrama to date, a suspense-thriller of real cinematic style with immense authority from Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek that delivers terrific emotional impact.

The critic praises this emotional political thriller inspired by real events in Chile, highlighting its mix of outrage and personal drama. Jack Lemmon's performance as a father turning to rage is singled out as superb, with Costa-Gavras maintaining strong pace and balance.

The US State Department denounced this uncompromising human drama on its first release, but it proved to be Costa-Gavras's most accessible Kafka-esque nightmare. It is a compelling moral tale of a disappearance during the 1973 Chilean coup, brought to life with incredible immediacy and impact.

The critic calls it Costa-Gavras's extraordinary first American movie based on true events during the 1973 Chilean coup. Spacek and Lemmon are fine, but the unending night-time imagery of a society coming apart makes it overwhelming, underpinned by the atmosphere of a paranoid conspiracy thriller.

The review notes the film's focus on US involvement in the 1973 Chile coup and praises Jack Lemmon as superior in confronting unwanted issues and Sissy Spacek as fully believable, highlighting its effective personal-level impact.

Ebert finds the film undermined by stylistic excesses that prevent a clear, powerful statement, though he praises the performances of Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon along with the scenes depicting bureaucratic frustration.