The Clearing

Industrialist Wayne is kidnapped by a former employee. While her husband hikes through the woods with his hands bound, wife Eileen reflects on her marriage and their love., Robert Redford and Helen Mirren shine in this suspenseful thriller about a wealthy couple torn apart when the husband is kidnapped by a disgruntled former employee (Willem Dafoe). The millionaire’s abduction sets off a nationwide FBI manhunt. Alessandro Nivola, Matt Craven, Melissa Sagemiller, Wendy Crewson., Dutch film producer Pieter Jan Brugge makes his directorial debut with the dramatic thriller The Clearing. Affluent executive Wayne Hayes (Robert Redford) and his lovely wife, Eileen (Helen Mirren), live in a beautiful home in Pittsburg. One day, Wayne is kidnapped by disgruntled employee Arnold Mack (Willem Dafoe). He is then held for ransom in a forest. Meanwhile, Eileen is forced to reckon with the FBI agents as they negotiate with the kidnapper. Alessandro Nivola and Melissa Sagemiller star as the two grown Hayes children. Matt Craven plays FBI Agent Ray Fuller. The Clearing premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004., Director Pieter Jan Brugge’s first film stars Robert Redford as Wayne Hayes, a rich, successful businessman, and Helen Mirren as his wife Eileen. When Wayne leaves for work one morning, he is kidnapped by Arnold Mack and led, bound, deeper and deeper into the woods. Eileen, eventually realising he’s missing, calls in the FBI in the person of agent Ray Fuller. But what could have been a conventional procedural is lifted to another level as Brugge switches between the developing relationship between Wayne and Arnold, and the uncomfortable truths Ray extracts from Eileen, or learns from other sources, becoming as much a story about their marriage as the crime.