Director Noah Buschel's melancholic neo-modern yarn about a hard-drinking private eye (Revolutionary Road's Michael Shannon) tracking a man reported missing is overly fussy and self-conscious in its noir details. But in The Missing Person, Buschel makes striking use of the Mike Hammer/Philip Marlowe tradition to tell a story of disorientation and loss in a post-9/11 world where the Twin Towers can go missing too. As Shannon mumbles interestingly into a whiskey glass, he's abetted by a cool, theater-wise cast that includes Amy Ryan, Linda Emond, and Margaret Colin.
