The Vanishing (1993 film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Vanishing

Directed by	George Sluizer
Produced by	Larry Brezner Pieter Jan Brugge
Written by	Tim Krabbé Todd Graff
Starring	Jeff Bridges Kiefer Sutherland Nancy Travis
Music by	Jerry Goldsmith
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	February 5, 1993
Running time	109 min.
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Vanishing is a 1993 thriller starring Jeff Bridges, Kiefer Sutherland, Nancy Travis, and Sandra Bullock. It is an American English-language remake of a 1988 Franco-Dutch film of the same name, also directed by George Sluizer.

[edit] Plot

Jeff Harriman's (Kiefer Sutherland) girlfriend Diane Shaver (Sandra Bullock) vanishes at a gas station, with no trace of her left behind. Three years later, and with a new (frustrated) girlfriend, Rita Baker (Nancy Travis), in tow, Jeff is still obsessed with finding out what happened. Barney Cousins (Jeff Bridges) arrives and admits that he was responsible for the disappearance. Cousins promises to show Jeff what happened to Diane, but only if he agrees to go through the exact same thing she did.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In a short series of flash-backs, the build-up to the crime is shown. Jeff is taken to the gas station where his lover went missing, and is told that if he drinks a cup of coffee, which has been drugged, and he will discover her fate by experiencing it. He does, and wakes up to find he is being buried alive. (This is where the story ends in the original Dutch version of the film.) Rita has traced him and his abductor to the area, and discovers just in time what has happened. She gets Cousins to drink drugged coffee by talking about his daughter, but does not realize the drug takes fifteen minutes to take effect. She goes in search of Jeff, but is thwarted at the last minute by Cousins. Fortunately, Jeff has revived and is able to climb out of the now slightly destroyed grave and kill his tormentor, beating Cousins to death with the shovel he had used to bury Diane.

The film ends with the couple back together, selling the story as a novel to a publishing company. This ending has been criticized by many as tacky, Hollywood fare. Wrote film critic Roger Ebert:

"The Vanishing" is a textbook exercise in the trashing of a nearly perfect film, conducted oddly enough under the auspices of the man who directed it... The ending of the original "Vanishing" is of a piece with the rest of the film. It is organically necessary to it. No other ending will do. That is why this Hollywood remake is so obscene."[1]