Rating: 
Summary: The Best Picture of 2004
Review: Another movie cast into the archives. I hope I don't actually forget this one and watch it again. The production value was obviously high, and the acting was just great. The obligatory plot twist is not twisty enough and it's almost as if the film gives up. Not like 'The Villiage' which twisted itself into a horrible farce, this movie just doesn't aspire to be anything wonderfull. Wasted talent.
Rating: 
Summary: Suspenseful with precision and timing.......
Review: I enjoyed this movie. It unfolds with a kidnap. A man who is unhappy with life, in particular his, and he searches for a victim; someone who he can hold responsible for his personal shortcomings and lack of preparation.
The cast, Robert Redford, Helen Mirren, and William Dafoe, in my own opinion as a viewer, do very well in their respective roles, performances, and deliver an inviting performance.
I enjoyed this movie very much.
Rating: 
Summary: NOW A THRILLER NOW A DUD
Review: Interesting structure and superb acting, frittered away on a pallid script.
The screenplay is very composed; relaxed like the character-heavy work of Clint Eastwood (e.g., Mystic River) or intense films like One Hour Photo. If you're looking for a wham bam thriller, this is not for you. The sets are sparse, the acting subdued. Even Craig Armstrong's score is light-jazzy, ominous.
The narrative crosscuts between two plotlines, one the abduction of a rich entrepreuneur by a former employee, and the other of his family coming to terms with this situation and their lives.
Truth be told, the film has over half a dozen genuinely tense moments that set it up like a compelling thriller gussied up in psychological and emotional trappings.
Sadly, the script is slight and simply lacks enough points of intersection for the parallel-plot gimmick to work. Too few twists of cause and effect, too few events to piece together, questions to answer, or mysteries to solve.
The motives and methods of the kidnapper seem borderline laughable when I think back about the film. The only saving grace is perhaps the resolve of the three leads in their roles, which come together in a neat closure of sorts.
Probably a worthy rental but an ultimately deficient film, which is tragic as it was this close to being a fabulous one.
Rating: 
Summary: I agree,wasted talent
Review: It was the great cast that gave me confidence that I would appreciate this film. No such luck. I was bored and unchallenged from beginning to end.
Rating:
Summary: Three Great Acting, But the Film Talks, Talks, Talks
Review: My three star rating is strictly based on three amazing actors -- Robert Redford, Willem Defoe, and most of all Helen Mirren. That's it, they show great acting skills, and that's all there to it. The first-time director Pieter Jan Brugge (so far known as successful producer of 'The Insider' and others) makes a worthy attempt, but the sleepy audiences would be left wondering what if a better, faster, and less talky script would have made the film. Probably, better and more accesible to us.
In fact, the slow and slim story is not a bad thing. 'The Clearing' introduces us the peaceful, suburban morning and the ordinary husband Redford and his wife Mirren. One of them is kidnapped by another ordinary American Defoe, and the film follows the two dimentions of the crime -- the victim's family that wait for the news, and the kidnapper's ever-changing relations with the victim.
So, this is not a thriller, even though it involves a kidnap situation. Moreover, the film tries to be very intelligent, or some might call, awfully talky. But the real problem, I think, is the lack of power or originality in the dialogues.
Surely, you are to face many questions of life after experiencing this kind of criminal act, that's true. But the film never raises any really morally or ethically intriguing questions through the long dialogues exchanged between the characters. And haven't we seen better-crafted films based on the similar premises? How about the first part of 'The Crying Game'? But here, you don't see the painfully realistic feelings of Neil Jordan film.
But the acting is just fabulous, especially Helen Mirren, who changes her character's mood so naturally that we are led to believe that she is that character. Surprisingly Robert Redford shows a more complex side than his one-dimentional role like 'Sneakers' in which he acted while sleeping, and he is very effective. And thank God, Willem Defoe does not overact -- which means he is not the same as the ultra hammy villain 'Speed 2' -- and when he subdues his manners, he is as good as William H Macy, who was in a much superior film with kidnap theme, whose name is 'Fargo.'
Rating:
Summary: Great actors wasted!
Review: THE CLEARING tells the story of a kidnapping. We see it, in alternating scenes, from the victim's point of view (Robert DeNiro, a successful businessman, who has NOT been quite so good a husband is nabbed by Willem Dafoe, a long-unemployed loser and walked through the woods towards a cabin where those who paid him to kidnap Redford await) and from the point of view of the family, (wife Helen Mirren and her children...this story takes place over days or weeks, while Redford's covers one day).
It's a nifty devide to have two different time frames going at once, BUT, if you think about it even a little, we KNOW what the outcome of the kidnapping is.
The movie wants to explore the rocky relationship between Mirren and Redford, an older couple who've been through alot and still love each other. And we DO get a good sense of the marriage, BUT why toss a kidnapping plot at it? Because the story of the marriage, however well presented, is sort of pedestrian. And the kidnapping itself it just about as lacking in drama as it could be. If you're watching this movie for action or suspense...forget it. The filmmakers are after something "DEEPER" and the miss it completely. In the end, you wonder why you bothered to watch.
Mirren is the main reason to watch. Can this actress EVER give an uninteresting performance? She's just fabulous at making the mundane resonate, and we thoroughly believe her. Dafoe is good as the kidnapper, giving us sympathy for his slightly obviously written role. Redford, never much of an actor, is adequate but mostly coasts between wooden and glib. He needs to play a powerful, corrupt politician sometime. He has just the manner for it now.
Anyway, if you're a Mirren fan, you'll probably need to see this. Otherwise, skip it. (By the way, the movie is "R" rated and I'm not sure why. I'd say PG-13.)
Rating: 
Summary: TALKY, PRETENTIOUS AND BORING
Review: The poster showed a man's bound hands. We could see only part of a face, but it was clearly Robert Redford's. Audiences assumed THE CLEARING (Fox) was a suspenseful thriller about how Redford's character was going to get away and perhaps punish his kidnapper, a slightly unhinged but determined Willem Dafoe.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
This finely acted but dreary, affected, character driven melodrama gives it's ending away in the first act and all the rest is talk, talk, talk. And if that's not bad enough, the staggeringly pretentious commentaries from writer Justin Haythe and director Peter Brugge layers the sophomoric rhetoric into realms of suffocating self-aggrandizement rarely heard in a lifetime of ordinary conversation.
Remember, time wasted on bad movies is gone forever.
Rating:
Summary: Total Disappointment
Review: The whole plot of this movie can be summed up as follows: penniless guy kidnaps rich guy and penniless guy either kills or doesn't kill the rich guy (I won't spoil it for you by revealing which). That's really all there is to it. It's not a story at all, it's a collection of scenes, most of them pretty dull. Like "Memento" and "21 Grams," this movie plays tricks with time: the scenes involving the wife don't run parallel in time to the scenes involving the husband. Presumably, the director did this to make a flat movie more interesting, but it didn't work. Presenting scenes out-of-synch is becoming trendy in Hollywood. I think the technique is already getting tired and is just "artsy fartsy," copy-cat nonsense that can't put a story there when no story exists to begin with. Of the three principal performances, only Dafoe's is interesting and well-crafted. He out-classes the film and his fellow cast members. But, in the end, even his performance is sunk by the lack of good lines: the interplay between he and Redford during their interminable trek in the woods is a marvel of B-movie banality. Mirren sleepwalks through her role. Redford seems to have had plastic surgery around the eyes. Whatever the extent of the surgery, it has limited his ability to register normal facial expressions. Just what an actor needs to enhance his perfomance. On top of that, he still looks old and worn out despite the surgery. His performance mirrors the way he looks: tired. The actors who play Reford's grown children are totally unconvincing. The guy who plays the son overacts embarassingly in certain scenes; it's as though he's determined to make this minor part vault him into a great Hollywood career. Only a bad director lets that happen. Note that the movie's director has no prior experience as a director, only as a producer. A scene that Roger Ebert loved, involving Helen Mirren's confrontation with her husband's elicit girlfriend, just doesn't ring true. In real life, the girlfriend would have refused to answer the wife's intimate questions and would have simply told her to go to hell. This "affair subplot," by the way, leads nowhere and contributes nothing to our understanding of the Redford character or his marriage. Another problem is characters behaving in inappropriate ways, which may have been a sloppy way of creating false "suspects" in the minds of the audience. Even if you mentally correct for the non-parallel time lines, you still have odd situations like Redford's wife and daughter cavorting in the pool, having birthday parties, or playing with their dog... all while knowing that Redford is in mortal danger. Overall, this was dull, sloppy and surprisingly devoid of plot. What was Redford thinking?
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Lives
Review: There is a deep and profound sense of foreboding that permeates Pieter Jan Brugge's "The Clearing," which reminds me, in tone if not in execution, of George Sluizer's "The Vanishing": another film about a kidnapping. But unlike "The Vanishing", "The Clearing" is more interested in the kidnapee's (Robert Redford) family than in the kidnapping itself: particularly Helen Mirren's Eileen. And despite the presence of Redford and William Dafoe (as the kidnapper), it is Mirren's touching and sensitive performance that dominates and perfumes this film with her transcendent and refined performance.
The central story involving the actual kidnapping and the psychological battle between Dafoe and Redford is weak due to spotty writing but when Mirren is on screen "The Clearing" becomes transparent, concise and intelligent.
Rating:
Summary: So many for sale - wonder why
Review: This was a disappointment, a real bore. Overall a surprise considering the talent involved. I waited for a twist, something exciting & entertaining, and you won't find it here unfortunately. Best of 2004? Not a chance.
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