2024 is halfway over and we’ve already seen the best film about logging we’re going to get until December—or likely for the decade. That is, without question, Hundreds Of Beavers, the wildly imaginative silent film that takes as much inspiration from Mario and Luigi as it does Charlie Chaplin. Still, Alec Baldwin is making a questionable run for silver in Clear Cut, a cookie-cutter guys with guns movie that also features a lesson in lumber.
Visually, Clear Cut looks like a mix of the random Discovery Channel show and random network drama you always find while scrolling through cable channels in a hotel room at 1 a.m. There are essentially two different movies happening here. In one, Baldwin mentors a new trainee, Jack (Clive Standen), on the pitfalls of the lumber business. “Logging is the deadliest profession in the world. Sure you want to get into this line of work?” Baldwin’s character asks Jack in the opening of the clip, before the men brandish their axes.
In the other, Jack goes on a high-octane journey of revenge through the woods, complete with all the usual elements like a dead or missing family back home, giant machine guns, and a duffel bag filled with stacks of cash. This portion of the movie also comes with its own harbinger of doom. “Well, Jack, welcome to the woods. Just don’t wander too far off the cut,” a different logger (Stephen Dorff) warns him before he proceeds to do exactly that.
The film’s official synopsis reads as follows:
Every moment is filled with danger for a man cutting timber in the Pacific Northwest, but Jack becomes the target of a brutal assault from more than the elements in this action-packed thriller. As Jack ventures deeper into the woods, he crosses paths with a criminal band of madmen from his past intent on killing him before he can fight his way back to civilization. Academy Award Nominee Alec Baldwin, Stephen Dorff and Tom Welling star in an electrifying drama about one man’s treacherous journey on the road to redemption.
This is one of the few movies Baldwin has starred in since the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of his film, Rust, in 2021. The actor’s involuntary manslaughter trial is currently set to begin next month.
Clear Cut also stars Tom Welling, Lochlyn Munro, and Jesse Metcalfe. It premieres in theaters and on demand July 19.