“Cleaner” blends classic underdog action with modern menaces

Cleaner is the latest action-thriller from action director Martin Campbell, and is another fun yet formulaic addition to the genre.

Having it be set in current day London, with all of the issues that come from the the societal stresses from the growing divide between economic classes, and how legitimate opportunities for upward financial improvement are becoming harder to achieve

Minor spoilers may be ahead.

Daisy Ridley plays Joey, a young woman with a troubled past, and family that is her only brother, Michael, who is on the spectrum and unintentionally complicates her efforts to live a productive and uneventful life. While running late getting to work, she is diverted to Michael’s group home to collect him: his behavior is getting him kicked out and back into Joey’s full time care. As we learn this isn’t the first time Michael has used his computer skills and his fixation on heroes and righting wrongs to exact what he believes is justice, he’s also not fully aware of how much it affects Joey’s life to interrupt her life to clean up after him, nor her annoyance at the disruptions.

Joey and Michael barely make it to the building in time, and she asks one of the guards she’s friends with to keep an eye on Michael while she works. Everyone is distracted with making preparations for a big shareholders meeting that evening, a gala event featuring government officials and a professional dance troupe, to honor Agnian’s “green operations” profile and celebrate the profits the company has made.

We learn that she’s a former member of the Army, who quit under questionable circumstances, but now she’s a window cleaner for Agnian Energy, a company that owns the upper floors of an imposing London skyscraper. She also frequently clashes with her supervisor, Derek, and he makes it a habit to annoy and inconvenience her at every possible turn, belittling her failures and current status. His retribution for her being a few minutes late is sending her to clean a bird strike off a window that has been baking in the sun all day, ensuring that she will have to work well past her usual clock-out time.

The banter between Joey and co-worker Noah seems to imply a friendly bond between marginalized workers, an acknowledgement they know they are lowest on any workplace ladder, with few available options to climb up. Noah leaves Joey alone with her tasks, and Derek continues with petty delays and requests to annoy Joey. Michael, meanwhile, has run away from the building security guard Joey has asked to watch him, and goes searching through the building for his sister, unwittingly putting himself in harm’s way.

The building and gala are hijacked; the dance troupe is really an eco-terrorist group, Earth Revolution, led by Marcus Blake (Clive Owen), who is intent on exposing Agnian Energy’s “green” lies. He has proof of the company’s true business practices around the world, and plans to show the world the pollution they cause and how they’ve relied on payoffs to corrupt British government officials to help them hide those truths and even help silence activists who’ve been prepared to expose their coverups in the past.

Being stuck on the outside of the building long past normal work hours means Joey’s still out there when the company’s shareholder gala starts. That turns out to be both a blessing and a curse, because she’s “out of sight, out of mind” when the takeover happens, but she’s more concerned for Michael’s safety than for anyone attending the gala at the moment.

Joey inadvertently learns about what’s happening even though she’s stuck outside the building in a window-washer’s cradle, including seeing that most people in the building have been rendered unconscious by a gas planted all around by the group, as well as discovering her friend Noah is also a member of the group.

Just a short time later things escalate when Noah decides to hijack the original intent of the siege — public confessions of Agnian’s wrondoings — by killing Marcus and anyone else in the group not aligned with his true agenda. The remaining small group of radicalized zealots proceeds with their new goals, and Joey is still outside, planning her own moves to save herself and her brother.

The tension between Noah and Joey ramps up once he realizes that she’s a wildcard and fully capable to interfere with his plans. Her agility and Army skills pose a real threat to Noah’s plans, and she plans to use them to the fullest… once she can get inside.

Once the police enter the situation, a female officer, Superintendent Claire Hume, becomes an ally for Joey, realizing that the disinformation they are being fed from about Joey’s actions and intentions are meant to distract the police from effectively countering their plans. Noah is in fact a fanatical anti-humanist who believes the only way to save the planet is to eradicate humanity, and he plans to begin his campaign with a violent act he believes with inspire others like to him to take action.

Eventually, after a tense standoff with police on the outside of the building, Joey manages to convince them she is not the problem, and she breaks her way inside, joining up with Michael in an effort to stop Noah and help the police try to save the hostages.

The action sequences in this one are fun, and Daisy Ridley did do most of her own stunts and fights. Campbell’s experience with action scenes large and small is apparent in how these are shot, as well as the composition of the nighttime shots of Daisy hanging onto the side of the building in the darkness, framed by the London city lights. Approximately 2/3 of Ridley’s scenes were filmed on the outside of the building, both in the cradle and hanging onto the window ledges.

There are plenty of chances for us to see Joey’s skills in fighting and with firearms, and the big fight scenes in the utility areas below the roof are tense and believable. The fight between her and Noah’s enforcer, a woman just as skilled and formidable as Joey, is fun to watch, as is the final fight between Joey and Noah.

The humor in the banter between Joey and Claire at the end is an acknowledgement of how sometimes strong women in combat or dangerous conflict situations are always climbing uphill, even in the successful aftermaths. Joey asking the Superintendent if she can keep the money Noah transferred to her during the siege is a funny touch, but…

Minor nitpick: How did Joey know that Noah had actually transferred £33 million to her account as a way to throw the police onto her trail and away from his scheme? That’s honestly the one glaring continuity error that stood out to me, but since it’s meant to be a humorous throwaway moment during the denouement, it’s not that big a deal that impacts anything else in the movie.

“Cleaner” is a serviceable and engaging, with characters that range from ordinary minions to reluctuant heroism while presenting an ultimately predictable story. That’s not entirely a bad thing for a modern action movie.

While the movie clocks in at 96 minutes, I think another 10 minutes would have allowed for some more backstory elements, as to how and why Noah got into the Earth Revolution group in the first place. It seems at first that he part of their leadership who disagrees with Marcus’ methods, but information discovered by the police show he’s always been a extremist in terms of conversation and preservation of Earth’s resources.

I also hope there’s a blu-ray release with extra scenes and a commentary track.

Don’t miss our interview with Martin Campbell: “Cleaner” Director Martin Campbell on filming action

3 and a half out of 5 stars

Set in present-day London, a group of radical activists take over an energy company’s annual gala, seizing 300 hostages in order to expose the corruption of the hosts. Their just cause is hijacked by an extremist within their ranks, who is ready to murder everyone in the building to send his anarchic message to the world. It falls to an ex-soldier turned window cleaner, played by Ridley, suspended 50 storeys up on the outside of the building, to save those trapped inside, including her younger brother.

STARRING Daisy Ridley, Taz Skylar, Clive Owen
DIRECTED BY Martin Campbell
WRITTEN BY Simon Uttley
MUSIC BY Tom Hodge