Veteran action director Martin Campbell seems to be more prolific than ever these days, having just released his women-on-a-mission war film Dirty Angels a scant three months ago, and having already surpassed his 2010s output only halfway through this decade. And now, he’s already back with Cleaner, a, well, slightly cleaner, more economical thriller that fits Daisy Ridley neatly into an adequate but obviously cheap Die Hard knockoff.
Ridley plays Joey Locke, an experienced climber and discharged soldier making ends meet (and paying for her autistic brother’s care) as a window washer at the London skyscraper headquarters of a petroleum megacorp. Inconveniently for her, but perhaps not for the script, she’s asked to stay late — to clean up a bird that smashed into the building, in one of the film’s few bits of actual levity — during the company’s big shareholder gala, which of course is infiltrated by eco-terrorists lead by a welcome but underused Clive Owen. As bad guys are wont to do, they dose the guests with knockout gas. Joey, meanwhile, is still stuck outside, and her brother (Matthew Tuck), who also just so happens to be an ace hacker, is desperately trying to get her back in so that she can save the day.
Cleaner takes care to at least try to establish some human stakes. But despite an attempt to make us potentially sympathize with our antagonists and their environmental agenda, they still never come off as anything more than generic mercenaries, especially once an early twist alters the situation dramatically. And the relationship between Joey and her brother could have offered a bit more of an emotional center to the film — this thread is also where we get an early hint that she got so good at climbing in order to escape a traumatic childhood — but that too largely is backseated to Cleaner‘s more generic action movie beats.
Not for nothing, those beats are in truth fairly sturdy and executed competently, but never particularly thrillingly by Campbell, although the action scenes do feature his characteristic bluntness and occasional brutality. For her part, Ridley makes a convincing enough badass in her physical moments, allowing the fights to feel authentically rambunctious. Unfortunately, while conspicuously blessed with the tenor and shape of an actioner, there isn’t much actual action until the final 20 minutes or so. Instead, most of the film is taken up by Ridley hiding in empty offices or in stairwells while the bad guys talk on the radio with authorities outside, and the limited settings give away — and fail to transcend — an obviously low budget. Still, at barely 85 minutes before credits, Cleaner thankfully has the decency to prevent things from ever sinking into mere monotony, which is worth at least a few bonus points these days.
DIRECTOR: Martin Campbell & Sébastien Raybaud; CAST: Daisy Ridley, Taz Skylar, Clive Owen, Matthew Tuck; DISTRIBUTOR: Quiver Distribution; IN THEATERS: February 21; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 36 min.
Comments are closed.