On February 27, cinemas started showing the action movie «Cleaner», the plot of which clearly hints that the main character, played by Daisy Ridley, is a tough cookie. Read about all the details of the next skyscraper takeover, and most importantly — how interesting it is to watch, as always, in the review below.
Pluses:
It looks normal as a one-off B-grade action thriller;
Minuses:
a complete secondary nature and unpretentiousness of the idea;
«Cleaner»
Genre action movie, thriller
Director Martin Campbell
Starring Daisy Ridley, Clive Owen, Tez Skylar, Matthew Tuck, Flavia Watson, Ruth Gemmell, Ray Fearon, Rufus Jones, Richard Hope, Lee Boardman
Premiere movie theaters
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb
Since childhood, Joey Locke has been a little ninja with Spider-Man skills. When her father was having another family showdown, she would climb up on a high-rise window sill, put on her headphones and immerse herself in the atmosphere of the evening city. 20 years later, after leaving the army, the adult Joey is forced to take care of her autistic brother and clean bird droppings from the windows of London’s One Canada Square skyscraper.
During one of her work shifts, the heroine witnesses a hostage-taking right at the gala party of the energy company Agnian Energy. The uninvited guests claim to be radical eco-activists, not terrorists, but the situation still looks threatening. In addition, Joey’s brother is in the building, so she will not only have to do everything possible to somehow contact the police, but also remember her fighting skills and save her defenseless relative if she can.
These damned terrorists don’t need bread, they need to ruin the rich people’s party and take hostages in expensive tuxedos and beautiful evening gowns. Then they’ll show up at Nakatomi Plaza and force one stubborn cop to fight them off. Then the Joker’s gang will come to the banquet to Bruce Wayne, and then Batman will have to step in. Now the baddies have reached One Canada Square, and one disagreeable girl will have to change her window cleaning brush for a gun.
Yes, you don’t need to be a genius of cinema to notice the obvious similarities between the local plot and «Die Hard» — a skyscraper, a corporate party, a random character somewhere nearby who ends up being a pain in the ass for the bad guys. The only difference is that the humble Joey Locke will take on the villains instead of the charismatic John McClane. The terrorists are no longer hunting for bags of money, as they clearly state to the dazed rich people.
Recently, we have already had the opportunity to watch the vicissitudes in the spirit of the second part of the cult action movie with, God bless him, the man, Bruce Willis in netflix’s «Carry-On» and the creators of «Cleaner» drew inspiration from the first — coolest, most iconic, best «Nut».
The production is directed by 81-year-old Martin Campbell, whose credits include such films as «Goldeneye» (1995), «The Mask of Zorro» (1998) and «Casino Royale» (2006), and you can really feel the steady hand of an experienced filmmaker who knows how to make action films. But the problem is that the screenwriters only mention the action genre in the final act, and before that Ridley’s character is helplessly dangling from a rope on the facade of a building.
So right up until the final showdown, the viewer will have to be content with a knee-jerk thriller in which the motives of the terrorists play no role, as it is presented here for the sake of form. Just as the dramatic fate of the protagonist is sketchily shown, it is hardly capable of claiming a viewer’s response. As for the main villain, the filmmakers seem to have a trump card up their sleeve, but in fact Hans Gruber is turning over in his grave at the unimaginative and primitive straightforwardness of the local antagonist.
In this case, the long-suffering but undefeated McClane needed only a few shots from his pistol to shatter the window and get inside. In «Cleaner», even a sniper rifle cannot cope with this simple task; such are the bizarre modern-day militants — the fighters against terrorists look more and more fragile, but the current double-glazed windows have become noticeably stronger.
In general, you don’t have to be bored while watching. Daisy Ridley is a fervent portrayal of a brave warrior who is much better at making faces than at cleaning windows, and has time to talk about Thanos and the Infinity Stones with her brother, who is armed with Mjolnir. Hostile eco-activist terrorists fall from the windows of the skyscraper like rain, like the usual rain for the area (magically, no blood puddles appear around them when they land). Somewhere in the background, evening London sparkles beautifully with lights.
Given the general unpretentiousness and extreme secondary nature of the idea (it’s worth mentioning the much more expensive «Skyscraper» (2018) with Dwayne Johnson), the pleasure of watching it is supposed to be of very modest qualities. Simple, uncomplicated, very disposable. But on the other hand, Jean-Luc Godard once said: «All you need for a movie — is a gun and a girl», and Campbell’s creation is at least in perfect order with this.
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