by MATTHEW HAYS

In the past decade, Robert Redford hasn't been handed the kind of roles he so richly deserves. It's a truth universally acknowledged that great roles are tougher to come by as actors get older, but Redford, the man behind Sundance who's an often underrated on-screen talent, hasn't been handed an About Schmidt or Bulworth.

The Clearing arrives as a pleasing entry. Here, Redford breathes life into a complex and conflicted corporate suit, husband and father. He's a successful baron, now living an extremely comfortable life with wife Helen Mirren. Then he goes missing. An effectively jarring time-line shift allows us to see the abduction after it's happened, when a desperate and cunning Willem Dafoe nabs Redford at gunpoint. Mirren, panicked and afraid, calls the police, but they're unconvinced anything's afoot besides a husband taking off. Soon enough, they have real reason to worry.

Pieter Jan Brugge's The Clearing is one of those organic films that unfolds at the kind of determined pace I thought producers had stopped letting directors assume. In measured steps, we see Dafoe take Redford into the bush and, as the two exchange barbs, Redford working towards figuring out what, precisely, the Plan is. Mirren, meanwhile, gathers the children at the homestead, pulls together the ransom and negotiates with the FBI agents she hopes will help her free her husband. Turning in a typically excellent performance, this is as much her film as it is Redford's or Dafoe's.

As with Mel Gibson's protagonist in Ransom, Redford is no angel, cleverly playing against type. Of course, his persona was one of golden husband and do-gooder WASP, something he's clearly revelling in chipping away at here. And just as it toys with our sense of Redford himself, The Clearing sets up a series of expectations around the suspense/kidnap caper, and then neatly undermines them. There's no fancy pants, annoying "gotcha" ending, thank goodness, just solid screenwriting - the kind Redford deserves.

The Clearing opens Friday, July 9

>> Movie Listings