The Clearing

Producer of The Insider and Bulworth, Pieter Jan Brugge moves to direct a story that he’s been passionate about. It’s a psychological thriller about a hardworking couple (Mirren and Redford) who have built-up a self-made business and raised two children, who find their lives torn apart when Redford opens the car door to Arnold Mack (Dafoe). Perhaps he’s naïve, perhaps he’s too trusting, but you get the impression Wayne Hayes (Redford) wants to believe in this man’s story.

Sadly Mack (Dafoe) has other ideas and in the business of the kidnapping, Brugge’s eye behind the camera follows Mack and Hayes’s trail into dense woods whilst wife Eileen (Mirren) is finding her home invaded by FBI investigators who turn over just about everything. In the turmoil, Eileen and Wayne, even though forced apart in the incident, find a greater love for each other.

The Clearing is one of those movies that leads down a winding and vaguely interesting path, it reminds you of another film In the Bedroom where Sissy Spacey and Tom Wilkinson acted their socks off. You soon get used to Mirren as an American housewife and Dafoe and Redford do their best to make the most of the tension between kidnapper and kidnapped. You yearn for a little more in the final analysis, when all is said and done. I Wish The Clearing had more somehow, but a good cast do their best at least with the material given and in many ways this is a very un-Hollywood like film and it should be aapplauded at least for that.

Matt Arnoldi