C

It’s easy to criticize Hollywood movies that try to obscure thin plots with lots of overblown visual pizzazz, but occasionally a picture comes along that makes you appreciate the effort by being equally flimsy from a narrative standpoint but stylistically barren as well. Consider, for example, the fizz of a flick like Ron Howard’s “Ransom” (1995), the script of which wasn’t much more imaginative than the title; the energy it exuded was pretty empty, but it did keep one’s interest from flagging That’s not the highest of virtues, perhaps, but as a film like “The Clearing” demonstrates, one can still be thankful for it. Though it boasts a fine cast, it’s no less a commonplace kidnapping tale than Howard’s movie was, and first-time director Pieter Jan Brugge plays it in so flatly naturalistic a style that it drags mercilessly. Stately, reserved and colorless, it can be described as serious and respectable, but also turgid and rather dull. Its inveterate good manners are ultimately its undoing.

The victim is a well-off businessman named Wayne Hayes (Robert Redford)–he made his money, we’re told, in rental cars–who has a somewhat tense but loving relationship with wife Eileen (Helen Mirren). (It’s later revealed that she discovered him having an affair some time ago, which helps to explain the occasional chill between them.) While leaving for work one morning, Wayne is abducted by a distinctly plain, sad-sack fellow named Arnold Mack (Willem Dafoe), who takes him, bound, into the woods for a long hike to a cabin where, he says, his employers–the actual kidnappers–await them. The script, which toys with the chronology for effect, alternates between sequences of Wayne and his captor trudging through the forest, engaging in the sort of conversation that reveals–in the style of a minimalist playlet–their pasts and personal problems, and scenes of Eileen dealing with her husband’s kidnapping. These involve the calm, efficient FBI agent Fuller (Matt Craven) who’s put in charge of the case; the Hayes’s two grown children Tim (Alessandro Nivola) and Jill (Melissa Sagemiller), who return to be with their mother through the crisis; and Wayne’s ex-mistress Luise (Wendy Crews), with whom, as it turns out, he had not entirely broken off.

“The Clearing” is told with intelligence and studied simplicity, and it’s obviously intended to be more than a kidnapping thriller; it wants to use the premise to investigate matters of family dynamics. But its subdued, rather meandering approach to material that’s ordinarily treated in a way designed to generate maximum tension eventually proves self-defeating. Even episodes that try to be exciting–most notably Eileen’s delivery of the ransom–are pallid because of their uncertain pacing and careless staging, and when the kidnapper is eventually caught in a plot turn that’s oddly similar to the real-life story of Bruno Hauptmann, the episode feels like a phlegmatic afterthought. The performances fall into line. Redford remains, apart from an obligatory escape attempt, remarkably calm and controlled, the image, one supposes, of a confident man using his wits gently to work his way out of a serious problem, while Mirren rather overdoes the stiff-upper-lip business, never really managing to reveal the churning passion beneath the surface. As for Dafoe, he tries so hard to overcome his natural ferocity that he comes across as emotionally constipated; his turn is reminiscent of what was once remarked about Orson Welles–his performances are actually more ostentatious when he tries to underplay. The supporting cast gets by, but this is basically a three-character piece. Technically “The Clearing” isn’t much better than adequate, with utilitarian cinematography.

One can admire the earnestness of a film that treats a subject usually done up in over-the-top fashion in a restrained, high-toned way. But respect doesn’t always translate into enjoyment or enlightenment, and in the final analysis “The Clearing,” for all its good intentions, winds up as a rather damp squib of a movie.