The Clearing review

The Clearing is a sparse thriller that has been pared down so much its skeletal story and minimally rendered characters are so feint as to leave almost no impression. Devoid of superfluous details, it's a quiet, deliberate study in restraint. Silence is refreshing and courageous, but it puts added emphasis on every note. The problem with The Clearing, despite a brilliant cast, is that the tune just isn't very interesting.

The film is set in a world cocooned from outside distractions. Time and reality are manipulated to create an aloofness and tension, but by isolating events it only succeeds in severing points of reference. For all its familiar themes, we're left dealing with people and circumstances that are hard to identify with.

Woven around a kidnapping involving wealthy businessman Wayne Hayes (Robert Redford) and an embittered loser Arnold Mack (Willem Dafoe), The Clearing is less a thriller than a love story. Hayes' capture is a set up for the evaluation of and reflection on his troubled marriage to Eileen (Helen Mirren). The action shifts between Wayne as he trades personal revelations with his kidnapper and ex-employee Mack, and Eileen as she struggles to negotiate his release.

At the other end of the cinematic spectrum from overblown kidnapping fare like Man On Fire and Ransom, The Clearing is an understated drama that focuses on the characters rather than plot, which is at best functional. First time director Pieter Jan Brugge and writer Justin Haythe have created three central figures who, beyond their obvious differences, share a sadness and loneliness. Since Wayne's affair with a work colleague, he and Eileen's marriage has been held together more by history rather than love while Mack's self-esteem has crumbled along with his career and homelife. "It's a house of disappointed people," Mack tells Wayne.

In the hands of such consummate actors, all three parts are infused with as much resonance as the spare writing allows. The wish is that perhaps better opportunity had been made of their talents and their exchanges. It's hard not to come away feeling that throughout The Clearing promised more than it delivered.