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MOVIE CRITIQUE:
"The Clearing" features spectacular acting by Robert Redford, William Defoe, and, especially, Helen Mirren,
but we all could have guessed that before we walked into the theater. After all, they are all pros and three of the best actors
in the business. Unfortunately, their fine acting is not enough to salvage this film or allow me even mildly to recommend
it.
The good news other than the presence of these three wonderful actors is that this story of a kidnaping of a wealthy,
semiretired business executive is not portrayed as a "how to" in the art of kidnaping, but, rather, goes into the
complexities of the personalities who are directly or indirectly involved because of this kidnaping. How do they cope? What
do they think? A lot of mind games are played by the participants, so at least this movie is intelligent on that front.
Obviously, Helen Mirren as the beleaguered wife has to carry this movie on her more than capable shoulders, and she is
wonderful, as always. Their two adult children both put in more or less by rote performances. The FBI agents do their standard
schtick in a generally failing effort to force the kidnapers' hand. And an investigation of past employees and the executive's
telephone records resurrects the painful situation of a prior mistress known to his wife, who had mistakenly assumed that
she was out of her husband's life when she isn't.
Willem Defoe plays the first member of a team out to loot the Hayes family of $10 million in diamonds and cash and his
performance in a cat and mouse game with Robert Redford offers a fine psychological study of a kidnaper who does not always
have the upper hand over his charge.
The executive, Wayne Hayes (Robert Redford), can push the kidnaper, Arnold Mack (Willem Defoe), around for the simplest
of reasons: Because he can get away with it. Dafoe can threaten him but he can't shoot him because he will only get paid if
he carries through on his end of the bargain, which is the delivery of Wayne Hayes to his fellow conspirators.
So Hayes challenges him and irritates him and makes all manner of simple requests which forces Mack always to be on his
guard. Arnold Mack, who has spent a great deal of time reading everything about his subject, thinks that he knows Hayes, the
man, when he doesn't, and this is a critical mistake on his part.
He can never let his guard down because he is a normal joe, perhaps even a failure at life, while Hayes is a successful
business man who is used to figuring out the angles of every situation and uses even the tiniest of pretexts to place Mack
in untenable situations where the power of having the gun doesn't do him any good.
I enjoyed "The Clearing" up to a point, at which time it crashed and burned before my eyes. In this case the
movie falls flat on its face during the final fifteen minutes. But there are small problems before those final 15 minutes
that occur and pass by because I had yet to see the entire picture.
First of all, and this is a minor point, really, but I simply do not understand the choice of the title for this movie.
At first I thought that Mack was leading Hayes to a clearing in the woods where he was to meet his confederates. This doesn't
happen. Then I thought that maybe the clearing was a metaphor for a situation in the movie, but nothing in this film lends
itself to this analysis, at least, nothing that I could see.
Another minor point that cannot pass without mention is that articles about Hayes comment on his photographic memory and
the fact that he can meet a person and still remember him even if he runs into him again ten years later. Hayes doesn't deny
this in his conversation with Mack, and yet he had met Arnold Mack years before as an employee of his own car rental firm.
Hayes even chatted with Mack and then sat down with him for a cup of coffee in the company cafeteria. Now Mack is a complete
blank to him, which makes a mockery of his claim of being able to remember everyone that he has ever met.
Secondly, this movie commits the critical sin of having the scenes between the family at home with the FBI agents and
the two men heading through a thick Pennsylvania Appalachian forest to their destination filmed in a non synchronous time
frame. I couldn't tell if the events were related or not because the movie goes out of its way to have certain events occur
at different points in time without letting the audience in on what is going on or why this is being done. Whether this is
an error in the film editing or a purposeful cinematic conceit, I cannot say, but it goes a long way towards destroying the
story, especially when coupled with the final 15 minutes of the film.
At this late point in the the story with just 15 minutes to go, the film essentially commits hari kari. I can't say that
it does a "180" because that would at least would imply some sort of logic on the part of the screenplay. There
is NO logic in the resolution of this screenplay. I walked out of the theater with my wife and words like "strange"
and "weird" and "incomprehensible" made up the majority of our commentary about this movie.
In essence, the entire foundation of the film is ripped to shreds and the movie takes an abrupt turn towards an ending,
or even two endings, that most thinking persons could never have guessed without having first seen it.
"The Clearing" is the first film starring Robert Redford that has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in
all the years that he has been running this world famous cinematic convention. Given the vast oeuvre of his work, any number
of his earlier films should have been selected instead of this mess of a movie.
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MOVIE SYNOPSIS:
It is another beautiful morning in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Wayne Hayes (Robert Redford) is sitting at a table on
the deck of the swimming pool behind their luxurious home enjoying breakfast with his wife, Eileen (Helen Mirren).
They have been married for many years and have two adult children and a grandchild to show for it. Wayne came from a humble
background, but he has pulled himself up by his bootstraps ever since. He had founded a car rental firm many years before
when it was thought to be business suicide with Hertz and Avis dominating the market, but, somehow, Hayes survived and thrived.
Some half dozen or so years before he had sold his company for $42 million, the check for which he has mounted in plastic
and keeps in a drawer in the desk of his home office.
A subsequent consulting firm failed, so Hayes now has a smaller job that gets him out of the house every day. A good portion
of the profits from the sale of his company were plowed into the purchase of their estate home, which they built from scratch
some six years before.
Every day like clockwork Wayne drives his Lexus down his long driveway, only to stop at the mouth of the cobble stoned
entrance to pick up his plastic wrapped copy of the Wall Street Journal.
A man hidden in the bushes across the street is eyeing him intently. As Wayne gets back in the car, he runs over and taps
on the car window while pointing to a brown manilla envelope in his hands. Wayne rolls down the passenger side window and
Arnold Mack (Willem Defoe) gives him the envelope, which, when opened, reveals disturbing photos of his wife in the privacy
of their back yard.
Mack then jumps into the car's passenger seat and pulls a gun on the surprised and now very shocked Hayes. They drive
off with Mack giving him the instructions, all the while with his gun held in his hand.
Before Wayne left the house, Eileen had given him an explicit reminder to come home by six that even as they will have
guests for dinner. The evening comes and the guests show up, but not her husband, which leaves her fuming as well as being
in a state of some anxiety. She makes her apologies and the three of them try to get through this evening of embarrassment
as civilly as possible.
Earlier telephone calls to his office had evidenced that Wayne was not at work, and a call to his associate was equally
useless as he is out of town. Late in the evening finds Eileen sitting in their bedroom looking at her empty bed and finally
deciding to call the police.
Wayne's Lexus sedan is later found parked in a garage in another town that he has never been known to frequent. Of course,
we know that Arnold had Wayne drive his car to that garage and park next to his far shabbier, older model sedan, which they
then used to leave the garage.
Arnold handcuffs Wayne and they leave the car to walk into the mountainous area outside Pittsburgh. There is a house in
the distance, he tells him, where his confederates are waiting, at which point they can proceed to the demand for ransom.
Arnold has Wayne speak into a small recorder the simple words, "It's Wayne. I'm fine." He then mails this recorder
and the Lexus car keys back to Eileen.
It's to be a somewhat arduous trek that will take most of the day, so Mack allows Hayes to take off his business coat
and has thoughtfully, if this is the right term to use, provides him with a pair of tennis shoes better suited for hiking
than his business wing tips.
The fact that Wayne was actually kidnaped is slow to be verified, but several FBI agents, led by Ray Fuller (Matt Craven),
move into the Hayes home to await the ransom demands. It is not until the car keys along with instructions to place an ad
in a newspaper arrive in the mail that everyone's worst fears are realized.
For the moment everything is kept quiet from the press, but Wayne and Eileen's extended family gather to give her support.
Their son, Tim Hayes (Alessandro Nivola) and his wife, Lane (Sarah Koskoff) arrive with their young child, as do his unmarried
sister, Jill Hayes (Melissa Sagemiller). Hugs and tears and daily swims in the backyard swimming pool fill the day as everyone
waits for the next shoe to drop.
However, for some reason the ransom demands seem awfully slow in coming. The FBI agents try several methods to force the
kidnaper to use a traceable cell telephone call, but none are successful.
The only telephone records of interest concern ones to a former employee with whom Wayne had been on intimate terms. Eileen
is crushed that her husband is still in contact with this woman even though she had told him to break it off years before.
With nothing else to do and this preying on her mind, Eileen decides to confront this woman, Louise Miller (Wendy Crewson),
in one of this movie's best scenes, to see if her husband is still being unfaithful.
For their part, Wayne and Arnold are wearing themselves out by walking up and down the Appalachian Mountains in what appears
to be a large state park as no homes or other signs of civilization are in sight.
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