"Cleaner" Review

I'm calling it now: Martin Campbell needs to stop making movies. We can't keep letting him coast on his "director of GoldenEye and Casino Royale" credits any longer. His last decent movie was 2017's The Foreigner (didn't finish a review, but scored 7/10), but since then he's concentrated on spotty quality girlboss action movies like 2021's Maggie Q actioner The Protégé (6/10), last December's Dirty Angels (5/10), and the dreadful Liam Neeson remake Memory (3/10). He's 81 and after watching Cleaner, it's time for him to kick back and relax.

 Daisy Ridley stars as Joey Locke, a young woman who has problems with authority and getting up for work on time. One day, on top of oversleeping, she is summoned to the facility where her autistic adult brother, Michael (Matthew Tuck, making his debut here and actually autistic), is being kicked out for hacking their records and leaking them online. He's been tossed from a series of homes, so now he's Joey's problem and she takes him to her work as a window cleaner.

That day the energy company that owns the office tower in London is holding a big party to celebrate their green energy bona fides, but as anyone who's seen Die Hard knows Rich Corporations + Office Tower + Party = Bad Guys Crashing and right on cue, a pack of eco-terrorists led by Cliver Owen's Marcus gas everyone in the building and take the corporate bosses hostage. He intends to coerce confessions of ecological damage while his hacker, Zee (Flavia Watson, who should be cast as Jodie Comer's sister yesterday), steals the evidence to leak and crash the value of the company's stock.

 Things take a hard left turn when Marcus's lieutenant, Noah (Matthew Tuck, One Piece), who was working as a fellow window washer with Joey, kills him and has his loyalists kill the rest of the squad who aren't all-in with his even more radical beliefs that humanity is a virus that must be eradicated and thus intends to kill everyone, even himself, once the confessions are taped and the data stolen. Trapped outside of the building, Joey must find a way in and do the John McClane thing to save her brother and the day. Good thing she used to be in an elite military unit before quitting because reasons and stuff.

That the script by three undistinguished writers who I don't even care to shame is just a "Die Hard + Under Siege except Steven Segal is a chick" AI prompt isn't even the core problem, but that everything is so lackluster in execution starting with Joey. The movie opens with a 20 years prior flashback to her as a little girl responding to her father beat up her brother by climbing on wall shelves across the kitchen to not be heard, ending up sitting on the window ledge as the camera pulls back to reveal she's on the top floor of an apartment tower. Except the beginning of the scene shows a motorcycle in the living room begging the question of how the actual heck did it get up there and why can't she just tiptoe and hide? (Yes, to show she's always had the elite skills useful for window washing, but come on.)

Her military training is handled Basil Exposition style and barely factors into her fighting scenes. At least she gets beaten up when confronted by men larger than her. Unlike Hans Gruber, Noah is a psychopath whose "kill 'em all for Gaea" philosophy is extreme even for eco-terrorists these days who are now burning Teslas instead of demanding everyone buy one.

Then there's the problem of Ridley's performance or lack thereof. Despite the visibility boost being the main star of the benighted Disney Star Wars trilogy, her career outside those films (for which she wasn't to blame for the poor writing and lack of planning) has been underwhelming and Cleaner isn't going to help. I saw a critic bluntly observe that she's not beautiful enough to coast on looks nor talented enough to succeed being a good actress and sadly I have to agree. She's a cute girl, but her blank mien doesn't work in even this low-bar circumstance. She's Kiera Knightly without the sex appeal or thespian chops (two Oscar nominations so far).

As for Campbell, whom I kicked in the shins to open this review, being "workmanlike" is not how to spend your golden years. Bland scripts for action movies require more than he delivers here. There are a couple of brief fight scenes where Ridley's stuntwoman pulls some cool moves, but that's not a recommendation to watch a blah, mean-spirited, tonally off mess as this.

Score: 3/10. Skip it.

The trailer makes it look like there's way more action and Clive Owen than actually present. She spends almost the whole movie outside, not running around in the building, causing mischief a la Die Hard.