Coburn Shines in Lackluster ‘Missing’ Story

Rule of Movie-Making, No. 1,063: If you’re going to call a movie “Missing Pieces,” make sure your plot isn’t missing any. Otherwise, the title becomes a ready-made review, just begging to be thrown back in your face.

You’d think that would be self-evident, but not, apparently, to the makers of Sunday night’s “Hallmark Hall of Fame” presentation on CBS.

Yet for all they’ve overlooked, they’ve managed to get one thing right: casting James Coburn as their central character. The fearless gun-for-hire of “The Magnificent Seven” and the swinging secret agent of “Our Man Flint” has lately reemerged as an eminently watchable lion in winter, winning a supporting actor Oscar last year for his portrayal of the abusive patriarch in “Affliction.”

In “Missing Pieces,” he once again plays a father--this time a flinty old cuss who’s devoted to his children, even if he sometimes intimidates them. His Colorado rancher rides into the opening credits on horseback, sitting tall, proud and alone. These turn out to be some of the qualities that scared off one of his sons.

The young man (Paul Kersey) carries the guilt of a long-ago driving mishap that killed his mother. Feeling that his father has never forgiven him, he keeps his distance by living in Mexico and relaying little about his life there.

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What begins as a domestic drama soon turns into a mystery as Coburn rushes to Mexico to try to fit together the pieces of another tragedy.

Handled differently, this might have been an intriguingly unconventional approach to some fairly standard--though always compelling--themes: sudden loss; parentsand children who can’t find a way to show their feelings; etc. The tonal shift comes as a jolt, however, and the pieces of the mystery never do fit together--most glaringly, an unaccounted-for gunshot wound that not even the Warren Commission could have overlooked.

The script has a cut-and-paste, by-committee feel--no big surprise, given its profusion of writers: Peachy Markowitz, Philip Rosenberg, Richard Kletter and D.W. Owen, working from a novel by Ron Hansen. Consequently, Carl Schenkel’s direction is also disjointed, though he has done a nice job of capturing the emotions that wrestle across Coburn’s face--wordless little dramas that convey a story far more interesting than the one the actor actually was given to play.

* “Missing Pieces” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBS. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be inappropriate for young children).