Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
When rancher and single mother of two Maggie Gilkeson sees her teenage daughter, Lily, kidnapped by Apache rebels, she reluctantly accepts the help of her estranged father, Samuel, in tracking down the kidnappers. Along the way, the two must learn to reconcile the past and work together if they are going to have any hope of getting Lily back before she is taken over the border and forced to become a prostitute.
Ron Howard's Western thriller offers handsome New Mexico landscapes captured with genuine cinematic scope, elevating the film visually above its modest reputation. Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones deliver committed performances, though the script gives them melodramatic family reconciliation beats that feel schematic alongside the grimmer kidnapping thriller elements. The premise blends frontier survival with Apache mysticism in an unusual way, but the execution is fairly conventional and the pacing drags in the third act. The ending resolves tensely but without much emotional payoff, undercutting the personal journey the film spent most of its runtime building.