The Clearing

Wayne (Robert Redford) and Eileen Hayes (Helen Mirren) live a comfortable upper class life in Pittsburgh high class suburb. They have two grown children (Alessandro Nivola, Melissa Sagemiller). Then Wayne disappears. He's been kidnapped by former employee Arnold Mack (Willem Dafoe). The FBI investigates which reveals Wayne's ongoing affair. Eventually Arnold demands a ransom.

The movie lacks the normal intensity. It's filled with a lot of the inbetween moments. It's a style that keeps the tension simmering at low. There are great actors here and it's fascinating to see them interact. There is also a timeline split going on. It's a great idea but it needs some more thought on its execution. This movie just needs greater intensity.

"The Clearing" is a taut, suspenseful kidnapping story.

But the tension is primarily ratcheted up not by action, but what we learn what stuff each of the characters is made of, particularly as to how superbly Helen Mirren and Willem Dafoe surround Robert Redford.

Ironically, Mirren's husband Taylor Hackford directed a more muddled take on a very similar story line in "Proof of Life," which couldn't decide if it was an action movie or a drama. Here first-time writer Justin Haythe and director Pieter Jan Brugge are more focused, even while playing a few tricks on the viewer with time-shifting "Rashomon" rewinds, though there are a couple of questionable holes in the story as it takes surprising directions.

It's a relief to finally see Redford in a role fitting his age, with an age-appropriate spouse and adult children, including Alessandro Nivola not playing his usual sensual snake. It's nice to see Mirren get to play an attractive, rich matron who can carry off nice clothes and hair styles as she usually hides herself in her roles.

Redford, Mirren and Dafoe could read a seed catalog and make it fascinating, so this beginner's exercise in suspense and character is not a dull film if you keep that in mind; Roger Ebert mentioned that he could not see the conclusion coming--it was evident to me in the first ten minutes, the set-up with life-styles certainly leading the plot development: the worker bee on the public bus and the king of the hill with his swimming pool and doting wife neatly contrasted from the get-go.

Because this is not primarily a violent film, but a character study, some may find the close-ups and studied manner of worried wife Mirren dull, but it is really the screenplay that needs some intensity and tension as the two men square off in the woods; their chatter is oddly pedestrian. There are moments worth watching here, but The Clearing fails to fully deliver on its promise

I'm 66 so more or less grew up watching the arc of Redford's career. Helen Mirren is a wonderful actress. Sometimes I pay attention to irrelevant things...like how well older actors and actresses keep their looks etc. Mirren to me looks beautiful....not like she did as a very young person....but I seethe young person inside the older person with all the knowledge and characters that inform her person now...which adds to her beauty. So I admire these two terrific actors for their work and also on a personal agenda level that I relate to my own experience getting old. In that way it encourages me....I could not act my way out of a paper bag so I do not envy them on a professional level....I think as we/they age, if their good, as these 2 obviously are, they learn how to deeply and more or less seamlessly incorporate things they have come to personally learn in their everyday lives into the roles they adopt, so, more and more, you see who they actually are, when they stylize personal realities into 'roles'. So, though here's a well crafted plot, it's more a character driven film...more about responses to a horrendous situation then the situation itself. For me, this is more interesting, the human angle, then bang-bang bs. which this could easily have been...as we see in several other high suspense, action driven kidnap scenarios....

I was watching this movie and everything reminded me of the Gerrit Heijn kidnapping in the Netherlands in 1987. I even regognised the road and the bridge where the murder took place. It is near Wolfheze in the woods, just next to the A12 highway from Utrecht to Arnhem. I could find no credits anywhere and only one mention on Wikipedia. I can only suspect the family never gave permission for this movie. And I believe they are right. All the characters are flat and there is no depth in them. This movie could not hold my attention and I think it was a waste of time on three great actors. We have a Dutch saying: Shoemaker stay with your own tools, meaning you should always stick with what you do best. This is so true for Pieter Jan Brugge. A good producer does not make a good director