Action movie ‘Cleaner’ is ‘Die Hard’ with a squeegee
“Cleaner” — 2 stars
“Cleaner” is a “Die Hard” knockoff with just enough fresh elements to make it watchable on a slow streaming night. Chief among those elements are Daisy Ridley in the classic John McClane role — nice to see high-rise terrorists outfoxed by an average Jane for a change — and some effective head games as to where the audience should place its sympathies. It’s meat-and-potatoes stuff (well, we’re in London, so bangers and mash), but you could do worse and probably have.
Ridley, who played Rey in the last Star Wars trilogy, is all gumption and capability as Joanna “Joey” Locke, an ex-British Army soldier turned window cleaner at the skyscraper headquarters of Agnius Energy, a supposedly eco-friendly corporation that is anything but. The formulaic script by Matthew Orton, Simon Uttley and Paul Andrew Williams takes a while to even establish that much, as we’re treated to a glimpse of Joey’s abusive upbringing and her stressed-out concern for autistic older brother Michael (Matthew Tuck), whose hacking skills have gotten him kicked out of multiple care facilities. Hmm, I wonder if they’ll come in handy later in the movie?
Michael’s latest ouster means he has to accompany Joey to work on the same evening that a glittering Agnius gala is invaded by eco-activists determined to air the company’s very dirty laundry. The group’s leader, Marcus, is played by Clive Owen with more than a smidgen of Alan Rickman’s Eurotrash hauteur in “Die Hard,” but also with an agenda that crosses a viewer’s wires. Marcus isn’t above taking hostages to prove his point, but he’s strictly anti-murder, and the two brother CEOs of Agnius, Gerald and Geoffrey Milton (Lee Boardman and Rufus Jones), are porcine environmental criminals with blood on their own hands. So, who’s the bad guy here?
Without spoiling too much, others in Marcus’ crew feel a different approach is in order, and “Cleaner” eventually reveals the genre’s contractually obligated psycho mastermind (Taz Skylar) before proceeding to crank up the suspense. As well as the suspension, since Joey is stuck outside the building on a cleaning stage dangling by a single cable for the first half of the movie. Director Martin Campbell (“Casino Royale”), a busy British journeyman, keeps it all moving and works up a nice, weary walkie-talkie alliance between Joey and detective Claire Hume (Ruth Gemmell), the two bonding over the wreckage of their personal lives as much as attending to the situation at hand.
Outside of a few late-inning fight scenes, Ridley earns her action-movie spurs without a lot of actual action, but she’s resolute of spirit and firm of jaw, and it’s easy to cheer Joey on as she jumps the preprogrammed hurdles of this subgenre. And if nothing else, “Cleaner” is interestingly conflicted about where its sympathies lie.
Watching a video of the chief villain proclaiming that “we’re watching the Earth die beneath our very feet while we do nothing about it,” Michael — this movie’s version of the wise fool — turns to his sister in confusion. “I don’t understand,” he says. “It’s the truth.” John McClane had it easy by comparison.
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Rated R for violence, language and brief drug use. 97 minutes.