Cleaner
I like Daisy Ridley. I like Die Hard. So a Die-Hard-esque film starring Daisy Ridley sounded like fun. While there is some eventual fun in Cleaner, which stars Ridley as a former soldier turned window cleaner who alone can stop a group terrorists taking hostages in a London skyscraper, Cleaner takes its damn sweet time to get there.
Director Martin Campbell delivers an uneven film that provides moments but may struggle to keep your attention for all 97-minutes. After a lengthy introduction setting up how overwhelmed Joey (Ridley) is with her life, her crappy job, and taking care of her autistic brother (Matthew Tuck) who has just gotten thrown out of another facility, the film leaves our protagonist stuck on a cradle outside the building far above the city while the action takes place inside. Eventually, Joey finally makes it inside letting the action piece of the action-thriller commence but by that point more than half the movie is already gone.
Ridley, despite whatever is going on with her hair, is the best thing about the film and does her best to ground Joey into a believable wisecracking hero. A script with three or more writers can be a red flag, often leading to some uneven storytelling and tone. While Ridley is putting in some serious effort to make the dramatic scenes work, everyone else seems to know they are in a throwaway thriller putting forth far less effort or steering full into scene-eating cliches, such as Taz Skylar as the crazy terrorist even his own team can't control.
While obviously CGI, some of the stunts outside the building with Joey work quite well. And the tension of how alone she stories above the city streets keeps you from noticing the plot isn't really advancing as quickly as it should. The short plot thread of the baddies trying to frame her as one of them is thrown away almost as quickly as it's introduced, suggesting it might have been a larger part of the script at some point. The film just feels like it's in a holding pattern for the better part of an hour until she finally gets inside and begins fighting back (which then becomes far too rushed).
There's not much else of note other than Clive Owen who doesn't have nearly enough screentime as one of the terrorists, by-the-book examples of generic greedy CEOs and hackers, mostly nameless members of the terrorist crew and hostages, over-enthusiastic cops with hardons for the action who will inevitably get someone killed without reason, and Ruth Gemmell cast in the Al Powell role as Joey's lifeline to the outside world offering encouragement and help when she can. While far from a complete trainwreck, I'm actually quite surprised the film made it into theaters as it has all the markers of a straight-to-video release.
Watch the trailer- Title: Cleaner (2025)
- IMDb: link
