Cinema: High Anxiety

WITHOUT A TRACE Directed by Stanley R. Jaffe Screenplay by Beth Gutcheon

Some tabloid headlines find the most vulnerable part of the civilized soul.

MISSING FLORIDA BOY FOUND DEAD AFTER LONG SEARCH. CALIFORNIA MAN SURRENDERS KIDNAPED BOY AFTER 7 YEARS. The tragedy of the kidnaped child is society's meanest joke on the fussy optimism of parents. Without a Trace, loosely based on the disappearance of six-year-old Etan Patz from a SoHo street in 1979, is an earnest, fatally muddled attempt to dramatize this dilemma. A boy is missing; his mother (Kate Nelligan) and father (David Dukes) wait and wait, not daring to...

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