Long Lost Son

Gabrielle Anwar is Karen, a woman who believes her son and husband to be dead for the past 14 years - until she sees a young man and her husband in a vacation video. "The Long Lost Son" is about a woman who will not be stopped from going to the resort location and tracking down her child.

This film was a real tour de force for Anwar, who gives a beautiful performance as the mother. The scene where she hears on the answering machine that the search at sea for her husband and child will have to be abandoned is amazing. So upset that she is unable to walk, she doubles over and leans on furniture to get across the room, where she completely collapses. All of her physical mannerisms and emotions rang true throughout.

In order to give the character more obstacles, however, the writer added a plot hole - Karen buys her ticket for this island, but she has no passport. The travel agent suggests that she bring her birth certificate and driver's license. Uh, this is 2006. She brings a birth certificate that's not even an official copy. Anyone who has ever traveled to a foreign country knows that if you have a ticket, you can be issued a passport immediately. Naturally she runs into trouble when she arrives and her story about her husband is not believed as he is well-liked on the island and a friend of the police chief's.

I had one other problem with this film, and that is, with Karen's son missing for 14 years, how could she have recognized him so readily? In real life, when the police thought they had found Eton Patz some years after he was kidnapped, the parents broke down when the saw the recent photo because they weren't sure that was their son. And look at Princess Anastasia. It's obviously not so easy. In this case, I bought it because I went with the mystical connection between mother and child - but really, if she had seen her husband on the video first, being suspicious about the young man would have made more sense.

What makes this film above average is Anwar's performance and seeing a new actor, Chace Crawford, who plays Matthew/Mark, the son. He brought a naturalness and warmth to his role - and it doesn't hurt that he's a major hunk. You'll be seeing a lot of him.

Gabrielle Anwar makes an unforgettable performance as the mother who loses her son and refuses to accept it and then regains him, by personal extreme efforts breaking all laws and barriers, like only a desperate mother can do. Her performance is utterly convincing, but so is also that of all the others - the father, understandable and sympathetic in spite of his obvious transgressions, and the son, Chase Crawford, as her 18-year old son recovered after 14 years. The story touches on the incredible, not any mother would recognize a lost son after 14 years, especially as he was lost in tender childhood, but here motherhood triumphs in supreme intuition. It's a problematic family drama with many debatable issues about fatherhood and motherhood - if father and mother have to separate, who has the right of their son? Motherhood usually wins, but the father is not without a case.

can anyone tell me the kind, type, or model of cabin cruiser boat owned by Craawford and his father in this movie??? It was the power boat that the son was on when the mother first contacted him. It was the boat the he used for "charters". Now i am just trying to fill up the ten line requirement for a posting This boat may be called a cabin cruiser or it may be called something else. Please respond to robertsimmons47@yahoo.com thank you.The boat was big enough for a person to walk into standing up. The 3 of them were on the boat at the end of the movie. It had windows around the sides so you could see out .

I saw this movie because of the previews. Chase Crawford is one hot, clean, decent guy. I am glad I watched it because his dad was an old familiar face to me. I thought the woman playing the mother got in many ways what she deserved until the very end. I don't mean a mother should lose a child for any reason but her attitude really needed some work. I do not understand why there is no information on this movie as yet but at least it now shows up when I request the title. I think that over the next few years the name Chace Crawford will appear more and more. At least I hope so. He brought that special something that made me root for the entire family. Dad got what he deserved in the end too. A place to sit and reflect. ha ha. Such dedication from a mother is something I would like to see more of today on TV. Maybe the networks will soon drop those stupid reality shows and go back to things like LONG LOST SON. Anyway I highly recommend this movie. It is just one notch above a movie of the week and will bring out feelings you may have not felt in a long while with the stuff being put on TV today.

Chace Crawford, an up and coming young actor, walks off with this movie for TV. He's charming and does a decent acting job with a featured role, his first. Story revolves around a man who takes his son and fakes a boat accident and disappears with the result that he and his son were lost at sea. This leaves the wife, a shrew, behind. She remarries and fifteen years go by when we discover the father and son aren't dead.

As expected, the mother learns this and goes on a wild search to find them. This is where the film goes down hill. This woman seems to break every law in entering another country, which is impossible without a passport of which she has none, nor birth certificate. She actually becomes a rather insipid person and you root for the father and son to lose her.

Gabrielle Anwar plays the long lost mother badly. Looking to young for the part, they try getting her hair up for the older woman, but then suddenly she's running along the beach with her long hair flowing behind her in the breeze. Her mouth also bothered me. Craig Sheffer does much better as the father and evokes sympathy from his audience as his reasons for the kidnapping make sense. To keep his son from becoming a mommies's boy. Unfortunately the shrew wins out. The farewell scene between the father and son, brought some heartfelt emotions from young Crawford.

There is some spectacular scenery of the islands and the sea in this film. Gorgeous photography and the good looking Chace Crawford make it a film worth watching.