In Japanese films and TV dramas, the kidnapping of a child is an all-too familiar plot device aimed at wringing out audience tears. But none have come close to the gripping, dry-eyed thriller Akira Kurosawa crafted in 1963’s “High and Low.”
Keisuke Yoshida’s “Missing” takes a fresh, less melodramatic tack. Instead of frantic parents and furrow-browed cops huddled around a phone waiting for a call, the film, scripted by Yoshida, begins three months after the abduction of a 6-year-old girl (Tsugumi Arita) in a seaside town. When we first meet her working-class parents — the stoic Yutaka (Munetaka Aoki) and frazzled Saori (Satomi Ishihara) — they are handing out flyers in front of a train station as a reporter (Tomoya Nakamura) and cameraman from a local TV station film them.