Missing – Pilot

• Title: Missing – Pilot
• tv.com: link

Remember those action-thrillers Ashley Judd made in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s (Kiss the Girls, Double Jeopardy, High Crimes)? And you really liked that movie where Liam Neeson starred as a retired spy who traveled to Europe to find his daughter after she was Taken, right? ABC certainly hopes so.

In the new series Missing Judd is cast as a former CIA operative who who put that part of her life behind her after the death of her husband (Sean Bean) in a car bombing. 10 years later, when her son Michael (Nick Eversman) goes missing while in Italy Rebecca Winstone (Judd) leaves her job as a florist and uses the skills she learned in the CIA to find some answers and track down her son and the men who kidnapped him.

Hours after arriving in Rome Winstone kills the only lead who might know something about her son’s disappearance, gets into a gunfight with who a group of armed men who are following her, steals a scooter, gets her son’s girlfriend killed, call in the assistance of an old friend (Adriano Giannini), break into a jewelry store, and get light years ahead of an investigation into an abduction local police, as well as the CIA, don’t even realize has occurred.

A side trip to Paris uncovers a drug smuggling operation and evidence someone has been watching Michael for years. It also manages to draw the attention of a CIA Agent Dax Miller (Cliff Curtis) who grudgingly agrees to give her a short window to search for her son but is forced to put out an alert for her arrest by Washington once the scope of the situation reaches the upper brass.

As pilots go Missing is hardly original. When it focuses on the raw emotion driving Judd’s character it has its moments, but the dialogue is often problematic and stilted, and the choice to make the U.S. Government the bad guy by attempting to stop the former agent from saving her son and forcing Winstone to stay one-step ahead of them as well is all too predictable. A more intriguing choice would have been to pull her out of retirement in an attempt to control the scope of her search as well as keep tabs on her.

Will Missing eventually lead anywhere? Maybe, but on what little we’ve seen so far I have some real concerns at what I expect the big twist to be (especially after seeing those photos of Michael) as we get episode after episode of Winstone chasing, but just missing her chance to find, her son.