Wayne (Redford) and Eileen (Mirren) Hayes live the American Dream. Together they've raised two children and struggled to build a successful business from the ground up. But there have been sacrifices along the way. When Wayne is kidnapped by an ordinary man, Arnold Mack (Dafoe), and held for ransom in a remote forest, the couple's world is turned inside out. Eileen finds her home full of FBI agents, their life under scrutiny. While Wayne is engaged in the negotiation of his lifetime, Eileen works frantically with the FBI to secure his release. The terrifying ordeal causes Wayne and Eileen to reassess their marriage and come to a deeper sense of their commitment to each other. With each passing hour, the need and desire for Wayne to return home safely becomes ever more urgent. [TRAILER]

STEVEN SNYDER'S REVIEW

The final minutes of "The Clearing" are a curious deviation, far different in tone and delivery than the remainder of the film.  Shifting suddenly from a unique psychological exploration to a routine thriller about kidnapping, we're left wondering just what in the world happened to the ending that could have been. 

Was this the way it was supposed to be, or is this derivative the result of some misguided directive from a studio, or focus group?

Given first time director Pieter Jan Brugge’s approach to the material, the answer almost surely lies with the latter. Often ignoring the traditional ransom movie formula, Brugge instead chooses to focus on the emotions and the mindsets of the story's key players. In a most surprising twist, we do not even know that the wealthy Wayne Hayes (Robert Redford) is abducted until long after the fact, and the missing, overblown action sequence that would typically depict the kidnapping is replaced with the greater horror of uncertainty.

Rather, Brugge lingers close to Wayne's wife, Eileen (Helen Mirren), and the movie is as much, if not more, about her than her missing husband. Cutting back and forth between a wooded ravine and a suburban house, Brugge follows Eileen's interactions with her children and with the FBI as she wonders just how and when this drama will end, as well as Wayne's conversations with Arnold Mack (Willem Dafoe), his desperate, blue-collar captor who loathes his lower-class life. It is a case of classism, yes, but in its most desperate and heartbreaking form.

What's most stunning about this movie is its lack of a transparent purpose. We all know how these stories are supposed to unfold, right? Kidnapper takes victim, makes demands, gets the money (or maybe not) and then evades the police. The structure is often set in stone from the outset. 

But "The Clearing's" story keeps the viewer at a distance. We don't know what is happening, much like Wayne, who does not know why he's been abducted or where he's going, and Eileen, who never learns what happened to her husband until the very end. 

And with this defiance of the formula and the routine, the story becomes something greater both literally and philosophically.

Literally, the story is more about the emotional conflicts of Wayne and Eileen as they are ruthlessly shaken from their comfortable lives. In the woods, Wayne realizes it is not the money or the job that matters, but his wife and his children. Back at home, discovering her husband's dirty secrets, Eileen is forced to deal with the reality of her husband, flaws and all.

Free of the standard chases or action sequences, the story's success lies with its actors and they are magnificent without exception. Mirren’s Eileen is a woman trying to keep it together on the outside just as she is losing everything she held dear. Arnold is a hopeless creature, convinced that money will somehow turn his life around, and Dafoe plays him low-key to prevent the audience from writing him off as a cook.

But it is in  Redford’s calm and detached manner where we find the metaphysical aspect of this story. He has been abducted for no reason, has increasingly less control over his fate and walks on and on towards a destination he can't see, and may not even exist. Unlike so many characters in this genre, he never really has a chance, and his conflicted acceptance of that fact is the most intriguing psychological aspect of this pensive, moody movie.

That is, until someone at the studio decided that all “The Clearing” REALLY needed was a chase sequence, fist-fight and surprise twist ending.

I'm grateful for the eighty minutes or so that made it through the studio and focus groups, but heartbroken that we were robbed of something greater.

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