Vanished Without a Trace

This true story type television film has a poor script but is highly charged to manipulate your emotions regarding perverts or child killers.

It wants to be a social issue movie but a television series like Quincy used to do things better.

Shelly Long is a loving mother whose mother disappears suddenly one day. We are presented with a city where danger lurks at every corner from the opening shot as she goes to pick her daughter up when she is out with her friends.

The film gives us a very obvious, leary villain so we can rule him out immediately but there is another more helpful suspect which turns out to be a person of interest later on.

It is a good job that Long's husband is a former policeman, because every time she rings up the police with any wide eyed theory, the police turn immediately even many months after her daughter's disappearance.

This is just a poor film with a horrible script.

The movie was well done. I was especially impressed with the little boy Daniel Magder who played the youngest child. He showed a lot of emotion and poise. The story line seemed a little suspect. Many of the low lives, seemed to be living in a fairly classy area.

Many tragic parents have lost a young member of the family in this cruel world which sick people are to blame. How can you take a child's life!... There are many films with the same story line, but I don't think the message to people quite gets across. It still happens even now this moment someone out there is being hurt. I think that these films could also corrupt people, maybe even to 'copy cat', to give them sick ideas. These films are not for boring housewives with nothing to do, if you have any compassion towards parents whom have lost a child you would of at least shed a tear when they found their child murdered months later.

However just that. Nor the act, neither the story wasn't anything special. But if you are a lonely housewife, tired of Mexican soap operas and wish to spent an afternoon watching TV this is the right film for you!

I just bought this on a cheapo DVD in France and was a little disappointed overall. Firstly, I guessed who the guilty party was very early on. Secondly, the first 49 minutes of the film are boring at times and the acting pretty hopeless. I was expecting something much more suspenseful, given the subject matter, along the lines of 'The Vanishing" with Sandra Bullock. The whole thing gets more lively from the 50th minute onwards but we are given little insight into why the killer acts in the way he/she does. Picture quality is excellent, that was at least to be expected since the film dates from 1999. A minor point, though it does count a little was that the actress who plays the mother didn't appear as someone very pleasant nor was she good-looking - for this reason it is difficult to sympathise with her ! With the disappearance for real of Estelle Mouzin in France over 3 years ago, the subject matter of the film is unfortunately all too real and had the acting been better this would have been a good film.