Thirty years ago today, Jeff Bridges kidnapped a fresh-faced, 28 year old, not-yet-famous Sandra Bullock, sending a still-hot Kiefer Sutherland on an obsessive years-long quest to find out what happened to her. This killer premise should have been enough to appeal to fans of hit thrillers like "Misery", "Cape Fear", and "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle". Instead, George Sluizer's remake of his own 1988 Dutch drama bombed badly with $14.5 million worldwide on a $20 million budget. Compare that to the far-more financially successful "Single White Female", released just four months earlier, and it's easy to see that something went seriously wrong. Stodgy critics like Roger Ebert, Hal Hinson, and James Berardinelli still had power to influence theater-goers and trashed it in favor of the original. "The Vanishing" was quickly banished to late-night cable where I discovered it, and I know I'm not alone. But why can't I find anyone who likes this movie? Why do we always have to pretentiously pretend that foreign films are better?
Bridges has been one of our best actors since the early '70s, that's not open to debate, and Barney Cousins isn't far behind The Dude, Jack Baker, and Bad Blake if we're ranking his greatest roles. A seemingly-normal husband and father whose actually the most evil man in Washington State, Barney approaches Buffalo Bill territory in his creepiest moments, and Jeff must have had a blast playing him(until the reviews/grosses came in, that is). With the recent vindication of Terry Silver on "Cobra Kai", Cousins just may be the most under-appreciated villain in history. This floppy-haired freak has half-a-dozen lines delivered with a strange accent that will delight family and friends for a long time after. Bullock was about a year away from superstardom("Demolition Man" and "Speed" did that) and her gas station abduction will linger in the memory for even longer.
Let's talk about Nancy Travis. She's attractive, she's likeable, she was in "Three Men and a Baby/Little Lady", and she would have been an A-lister if people had paid to see her waitress-heroine Rita in "The Vanishing". There's certainly no shame in a sitcom career, but there's an alternate reality where Travis makes a ton of movies in the '90s and 2000s. As for Kiefer, the failure of this film and a few others, eroded his "Lost Boys" goodwill until that post-9/11 hero Jack Bauer came to his rescue. The hapless role of Jeff Harriman was never going to put Sutherland in contention with Tom Cruise(Donald's son was in "A Few Good Men" in '92), but his unsettling buried-alive meltdown was worth the price of admission alone. Drink the drugged coffee with him the next time you come across this criminally-underrated effort on one of the streamers. You'll experience everything that he experienced- a solid, star-driven, mid-budget movie with a Hollywood ending, that's better than "Knock at the Cabin" and at least half of what's out there today.
