Film: Cleaner
Cast: Daisy Ridley, Clive Owen, Taz Skylar, Flavia Watson, Ray Fearon, Rufus Jones, Richard Hope, Lee Boardman
Director: Martin Campbell
Rating: * * *
Runtime: 96 min
Martin Campbell’s latest movie, “Cleaner,” has Daisy Ridley play Joey, who, since childhood, has had an enviable head for heights. This fact is represented early on in the film when, as a child, her escape from the loud shouting matches her parents frequently indulged in was to go and sit precariously outside the high-rise’s window to relax in the night air. In the present day, her job is to clean windows hanging on the side of buildings at dizzying heights above street level.
In present-day London, Joey is shown rushing around dealing with her autistic brother Michael’s (Matthew Tuck) latest run-in with his care facility administrators while getting late for work. At the workplace, a high-rise building, office of an Energy conglomerate, she leaves her brother in the care of a security guard and goes up to contend with an irate boss who sticks her on a duty she’d rather not do. As she goes about the risky business of cleaning windows on the outside, an eco-terrorist organisation strikes inside the building, taking control of the executives at their gala and demanding they confess to their ecological crimes. It’s up to Joey and her brother to save the day since the terrorist activists have gone rogue and threaten to detonate bombs that would devastate the entire building.
The story sounds silly and far-fetched, but it`s told in a serious fashion in a tone that’s moderate with exhilarating moments of crisp, precise action. Written by Simon Uttley, “Cleaner” is a concept-driven action movie and has a “Die Hard” fascination for heights. The narrative is imbued with high-flying antics, vertigo-inducing terror and claustrophobic thrills to keep the audience invested in what`s happening. Campbell makes the sequences shot outside the high rise look extremely perilous and thrilling. Joey is resourceful enough to find her way into the building, and as we come to know midway through the film, that she has a reputed military combat background to fulfil the ‘saviour’ role she is expected to play.
The extremists that attack the energy company call themselves “Earth Revolution,” and have two contrasting leader contenders. Marcus (Clive Owen) is level-headed, not into killing, wants to expose the evil corporation’s environmental wrongdoings to the public, while Noah (Taz Skylar) is wild and in it to kill despite Marcus’s protests.
In its efforts to expose eco-terrorism, the script creates two sets of bad guys striving to wipe out each other. There’s not much room for a positive environment environment-friendly message in such a convoluted scenario.
Ridley is back in action. She is cool under pressure and delivers sharp, precise action, wearing a stiff upper lip and a scowl. Ridley and Tuck, stuck in a rare high-pressure situation, manage to throw in some tender filial feelings in between. Taz Skylar as Noah, the self-appointed leader of the eco terrorist group, is capably wild in his enactment of an out-of-control anti-humanist with an extreme death wish. It’s a pity that a capable performer like Clive Owen had nothing much to do here.
Directed with precision and lucidity by Martin Campbell, “Cleaner” is a fairly cool entertainer that doesn’t go into brash excess or too much flash to score its thrills. It is sedate and thoughtfully helmed and has a well-put-together together strongly committed performance from Ridley. It may not be an adrenaline-gushing spectacular, but it’s definitely a pulse-quickening actioner high on energy and thrills.
