Clear Cut (2024)

2 Stars (out of 4)

Wreck of the Woods

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Brian Skiba's outdoorsy action-thriller Clear Cut tries to build its underlying story through strategically-placed flashbacks, and it nearly works, but the more information we get, the less logical it all becomes.

Jack (Clive Standen) takes a lumberjack job, working with the veteran Sam (Alec Baldwin). Sam teaches Jack the ropes, but during a break, Jack stumbles upon a meth-cooking operation in the woods, and, amazingly, a bag packed full of cash. He grabs it and runs, and finds himself chased by drug dealers Eli (Jesse Metcalfe), Keen (Tom Welling), and Jasmine (Chelsey Reist), and meth cook Bo (Lochlyn Munro).

While trying to survive, Jack flashes back on life with his family, his wife Becca (Lucy Martin) and their five-year-old daughter Maddie. After a while, though, it becomes clearer and clearer that Jack was never in the woods for a job. Rather, he has some unfinished business to attend to.

It's difficult to discuss details without giving away some surprises, but suffice to say that, in Clear Cut, new details don't necessarily clarify, or excuse, dumb behavior. Additionally, there's a tidbit of information, involving a "cold deck," that the hero employs as part of his plan, even though he didn't know what a "cold deck" was at the beginning of the story. (The alternative is that it's just a wild coincidence, which is equally lazy.)

In essence, the hero sometimes appears to be running for his life and is sometimes on the attack. Sometimes his attacks are brutally effective, and sometimes they're useless. Sometimes the flashbacks make the hero more relatable, and other times they make him look like an idiot. (Certainly his first questionable act results in the brutal death of an otherwise decent character, and there are no consequences.)

At least Lochlyn Munro, who is becoming a regular character actor in these kinds of B-movies, brings his A-game; he's like a poor man's Gary Busey, barking like a crazy hyena with his grubby teeth, red headband, and overalls unhitched on one side. Otherwise, Clear Cut gets points for its ambitious screenplay, but it required a little more thought and perhaps another draft for it to work.