Producer: Corey Large Director: Brian Skiba Screenplay: Joe Perruccio Cast: Clive Standen, Alec Baldwin, Stephen Dorff, Lochlyn Munro, Jesse Metcalfe, Tom Welling, Chelsey Reist, Mike Dopud. Lucy Martin and Tom Stevens Distributor: Lionsgate
Grade: D
Whether it’s true, as one character remarks in Brian Skiba’s outdoors thriller, that logging is the most dangerous of occupations, it’s certainly true that “Clear Cut” is among the most violent of recent movies. There are two human immolations in it (one involving a person carrying a gun, the bullets in which blast out in the fire, causing consternation among the onlookers; the other is less explosive but equally graphic). There’s a scene in which a character is killed with an arrow through the neck. In another case, a person is crushed by a cascade of heavy logs. Then there are the innumerable shootings and stabbings, along with plenty of old-fashioned fights. The corpse count is very high.
All the mayhem is part of a convoluted plot centering on a fellow named Jack (Clive Standen), who’s introduced signing up for a job in a logging business owned by Sam (Alec Baldwin). On the way to a tree deep in the forest Sam explains to the newbie the details of the “deadliest” profession and the caution he should always observe in handling the equipment; the only interruption comes when Sam stops for a chat with Ike (Stephen Dorff), a forest ranger whose gaze Jack suspiciously tries to avoid.
At the site all seems to be going smoothly until Jack goes off into the woods on lunch break and finds a meth lab. Before he can leave his hiding place, he watches a truck arrive with drug trafficker Eli (Jesse Metcalfe) and his two enforcers Keen (Tom Welling) and Jasmine (Chelsey Reist). While they go into the lab trailer with crazy crossbow-wielding cook Bo (Lochlyn Munro), Jack investigates the truck bed and finds a bag filled with money—Eli’s payment for Bo’s product. He runs off with it.
The rest of the movie is a long pursuit of Jack by Eli, Bo, Keen and Jasmine as he tries to evade them—or, in the event of a confrontation, fight them off by any means necessary. But the chase is punctuated by a series of flashbacks in which Jack’s past is gradually revealed—his marriage to Becca (Lucy Martin), his job with a partner named Keller (Mike Dopud), a traumatic tragedy that befell him, and a suggestion that came from a friend named Jacob (Tom Stevens). As these pile up, they reveal “Clear Cut” to be a tale of revenge which, in this case, proves not necessarily a dish best served cold.
Also, unfortunately, a tale that turns out to be all too obvious, however gussied up it is with fuzzy flashbacks—the sort of thing that would barely have passed muster as a pulp novel in the 1950s. The cast includes a lot of recognizable faces—Dorff, Welling, Metcalfe, Munro and of course Baldwin—but none of them are well used, nor do any give the material their best effort, though a good deal of physical activity is required of them and lesser-known colleagues like Reist and Stevens (or, more likely, their stunt doubles). As for Standen, he acts up a storm trying to get us to feel for Jack, but remains pretty much a stiff.
The film is announced at the start as “A Brian Skiba Flick,” and that’s appropriate, since he not only directed it in helter-skelter fashion but edited it as well—trying desperately to integrate all the flashbacks in Joe Perruccio’s screenplay into the present-day pursuit but succeeding in doing little but sow confusion. One can, if one tries, parse it after the credits roll and extract a degree of coherence from the jumble, but it hardly seems worth the time.
In fact, the best thing about “Clear Cut” are the nice outdoor vistas of forests and mountains; otherwise the work of cinematographer Gabriel Medina is workmanlike at best. The same can be said of Eliott Montello’s skimpy production design and Eva King’s generic score.
If one’s willing to move into Shakespearean mode, he might say that Skiba’s movie clearly represents the most unkindest cut of all.