Every once in a while we get one of those movies that just works. It taps into real issues and anxieties, it knows how to showcase its cast, and it is just a hell of a good time in the theater. Searching is one of these pictures. Fun, fast, and pretty smart -- until you're heading home and you realize it's not as smart as it wanted to be. Under scrutiny, it falls apart. But to hold your disbelief suspended so thoroughly for over 100 minutes is no small feat, especially when the whole film is a gimmick.
Our beloved John Cho plays a father (and I forget his name, so let's just keep it John Cho) whose daughter disappears. As he attempts to find her, he must also try to get to know her. Using her social media accounts, he reacquaints himself with his own daughter and discovers that their relationship was not as healthy as he had hoped. The story isn't terribly interesting or compelling, though by the halfway point it gets surprisingly twisty in its "whodunnit" attitude. John Cho starts to lose his cool and points fingers at those closest to him, and we go through every single emotional beat with him.
What is interesting and compelling is the film's presentation. Not filmed with conventional cameras and techniques, the movie plays at us through the frames of whatever electronic device John Cho uses: his computer, his daughter's computer, video cameras, smartphones. I was worried the shtick would wear out fairly quickly, but in director Aneesh Chaganty's capable hands the film flows nicely from one intrigue to the next. We often see the screen through John Cho's eyes, and when he makes an insight or discovery, we do simultaneously. For not ever actually seeing "the real John Cho" directly, we profoundly understand what he's going through and thinking.
As a mystery, the film has more red herrings than I could count. But what really bothered me during and after the film is the extent to which the gimmick is adhered to. Would a detective really use Face Time in the dead of night to regularly contact the father of a missing girl? Would she allow -- indeed, encourage -- him to do his own investigating and then take him at his word without following up? And would she -- oh, wait, that would spoil the mystery! Though not the kinds of problems that stopped me from enjoying the movie, these issues had me thinking a lot about my own digital footprints and online security. Of course, that's probably the main takeaway the filmmakers intended to impart.
But really, I was just here for the John Cho magic. You should be too.
IMDb: Searching
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