Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Based on the real-life experiences of Ed Horman. A conservative American businessman travels to Chile to investigate the sudden disappearance of his son after a military takeover. Accompanied by his son's wife he uncovers a trail of cover-ups that implicate the US State department which supports the dictatorship.
Costa-Gavras's political thriller is driven by a genuinely gripping and morally weighty true story — the Pinochet-era disappearance of Charles Horman — with a plot that steadily tightens its screws as US complicity is revealed. Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek deliver exceptional, emotionally layered performances that anchor the political outrage in human grief. The cinematography is competent and functional but not particularly distinctive. The film treads ground Costa-Gavras had covered before (Z, The Confession), so its political-thriller form isn't wholly new, though the American-implication angle gives it a sharper edge. The ending — the judicial non-resolution and Horman's blunt closing text — is devastating and morally powerful, one of the most effective uses of real-world epilogue in cinema.