The Clearing
Picture: B-
Sound: B- Extras: C+ Film: C+
Robert Redford is good at picking interesting and unusual
films to make, as he proved recently with Tony Scott’s Spy Game and the
underrated Last Castle, but sometimes the projects do not turn out as
well as they might first seem and The Clearing is one of those
interesting misses that eventually wears thin and has an unsatisfying
conclusion.
A married couple (Redford and Helen Mirren) are having
marriage troubles, but things get worse when he is kidnapped for ransom by a
stalker (Willem Dafoe), who is doing this for the money on behalf of some
secret clients. The film mixes
retracing the abduction, with flashbacks of the couple’s family life and the
idea as to whether he can get away without being murdered first. We have seen much of this before, but Justin
Haythe’s screenplay cannot come up with anything new to do with any of the
situations and producer/director Peter Jan Brigge tries to give it a smart
pace. Too bad that backfires and drags
out the scripts problems. The actors
are good, but even they cannot save the film.
Too bad, because with more planning and a better screenplay, this could
have been good.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is not bad for
an independent film, but is not very glossy, nor does it have great
detail. It was shot to have a cold,
somewhat colorless aesthetic and that also exaggerates the script problems
visually. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is
better than the 2.0 Stereo with Pro Logic versions enough, though this is a
dialogue-based film. Deleted scenes in
the extras section do not add to the film, the commentary by the Haythe, Van
Brigge and editor Kevin Tent, A.C.E., shows they did not know where to go despite
trying to do a smart film and you can see the screenplay, which is not a PDF
file. A trailer and an “inside look” at
the upcoming Fox film Hide & Seek that turns out to be just a
trailer too. This film will be a curio
for many considering the interesting star power, but The Clearing is too
clear of new ideas to really work. At
least there is enough here to study why this did not work.
- Nicholas Sheffo
