One of the best films i have seen

Fantastic!

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

The Lost Son (1999)All the elements are here for a classic noir-inspired investigation movie where no one is to be trusted and our leading man is a likable, steady, world weary paradigm. If you are familiar with "The Big Sleep" with Bogart and crew, you might actually get a sense of what this movie is trying to do. Not only does the plot begin in a similar way, with a rich family saying one of their members (the son) is missing and with the daughter being a steamy and somewhat unreliable secondary force (played by Nastassja Kinski), but then the rest of the movie proceeds to get increasingly confusing.In "The Big Sleep" this is almost a positive thing, making it fast, visual, and experiential (meaning you get sucked into the world and can't stop looking and trying to keep up). Here, in "The Lost Son," it isn't what anyone would call fast, which hurts it because the complexity builds and the suspicions fester with lots of lulls, either whole short scenes that don't seem quite necessary or with an editing that makes every little cut one or two seconds too long. Which adds up to a kind of pace some people might like, a loitering and inhabiting this strange little nether world the movie creates. But for me it just made me fuzz out a little.The leading detective, Xavier Lombard, is played by the really compelling French actor, Daniel Auteuil. He carries the movie even through it's pauses. Besides Kinski, whose role is small (and thankfully, really--she doesn't really "act" so much as say her lines), there is a second male lead, the Irish actor Ciaran Hinds, who is quite good. (He had a terrific role in the peculiar and enjoyable "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.") And the filming is rather nice, with a huge range of scenes and moods, held together not only by the camera-work, but the solid directing by Chris Menges.There will be an odd feel to this film for some American viewers, because it's an increasingly common hybrid of French and British filmmaking--language, crew, cast, and locations all spread out from one side of the Channel to the other. It's nicely European, but less of that familiar "British" film that many people know (or know without knowing they know it, looking vaguely like Hollywood). In short, this has a slightly fresh look. It does not however feel as new or odd or wonderful as some of the detective crime films coming out of, say, Scandinavia, among the European types.This matters only in that half of the film is its atmosphere. The plot and some of the core acting could use a bolstering and maybe even a sense of necessity at times (the movie just keeps going through its attractive paces), but in all, it might even be a film you'd enjoy more the second time. Which says a lot.

Started out OK but quickly annoyed me with its inexplicable plot devices that let down a film that otherwise seems to take itself very seriously. Things that weakened the story: 1) Main character finds address of missing person by calling a telephone company, insinuating the call centre rep is assuming the main character is someone else. This would never happen due to Data Protection. 2) No obstacles for the main character to overcome; whatever information he wanted he could get very easily. Hard to believe since considering the type of people involved. 3) Bad guy has no security measures protecting his very expensive home and contents, allowing main character to break by smashing a window. Highly unlikely.Ultimately, they film parodied James Bond towards the end with the scenarios becoming more & more ridiculous to the point where the very serious subject matter was trivialised and pushed aside in favour of Bond-esquire capture & escape sequences.Dull, uninspired, unemotional & lacking in atmosphere.

In The Lost Son, a private eye searching for a missing man stumbles upon a child prostitution ring. This film incorporates all of the worst stereotypes you could imagine in a worst-case scenario that exists only in the minds of Hollywood, the press and AG John Asscrap. If you get a chance to see this, you'd be better off getting lost yourself.

Taking a subject as controversial as paedophilia and attempting to build a routine detective story around it is prone to failure, not least because it is very easy to appear sensational and exploitative. Having said that 'The Lost Son' doesn't fall down on that count, but instead disappoints because it isn't bold enough. For two thirds of the film we have the basis of a great detective story, which only falters when the director feels the need to throw in a few heroics, and sentimentalities. When Lombard delivers the saved children, by truck, into the arms of the priest, he's almost saint-like - and it's just a bit too trite. I was also letdown by the 'twist' ending, which was totally expected. Shot mostly on location in London, the film captures the claustrophobia and loneliness of Lombard's existence since the death of his wife and child, the catalyst for his own need to run away. Moving the action to Mexico destroys the sense of isolation and spoils the flow of the film immensely. Auteil's performance as the hard-bitten private investigator veers away from cliche because you really can believe in this man's story. He himself is a 'lost son', searching for some meaning to exorcise his own demons, and sorting out other people's problems while trying to bury his own. It is telling that his only real friend is a prostitute, and his life tends to revolve around those close to the 'business' he so ardently abhors.'The Lost Son' isn't an easy film to watch, and doesn't deliver on all it promises, with a tendency to favour flashiness over a fleshed out story. But worth seeing, nonetheless.