‘Cleaner’ Review: A Charismatic Daisy Ridley Carries a Cheesy but Fun Action Flick Made in the ‘Die Hard’ Mold
James Bond alumni Martin Campbell’s modest popcorn caper has murky themes and wastes Clive Owen, but knows how to steer a clockwork action movie.
Excursions to a galaxy far, far away aside, Daisy Ridley’s career of late has been refreshingly grounded with projects of all scales. From the modest but fiendishly entertaining domestic thriller “Magpie” to the soulful office dramedy “Sometimes I Think About Dying” and the inspirational sports movie “Young Woman and the Sea,” the wide-ranging filmography Ridley has been recently building on her own terms stretches across biting indies and classical family blockbusters alike.
With director and James Bond veteran Martin Campbell’s “Cleaner,” Ridley further expands her repertoire with an old-fashioned and pressure-cooker action flick, dangling from the glass façade of a skyscraper to give both Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and Bruce Willis’ John McClane a run for their money. In fairness, the tiny pleasures of the predictably paint-by-numbers “Cleaner” aren’t remotely close to anything a white-knuckled “Die Hard” movie or the magnificent “Mission: Impossible” franchise can offer. But Ridley’s muscular presence as an action heroine stuck on an unreliable swing-stage scaffolding is so absorbing that you can’t help but root for her — both Ridley, who seems to be having an enormous amount of B-movie fun here, and her headstrong character Joey, the cleaner in question.
The movie establishes a fair amount about her before Joey finds herself swaying near the top of One Canada Square in London, one of the tallest buildings in the U.K. For starters, she has a neurodivergent brother, Michael (Matthew Tuck), who’s about to be kicked out of his care home for misconduct on exactly the wrong day for Joey. She’s got a window-cleaning gig she’s already running late for, and the last thing she needs is to have Michael accompany her to work. But that’s exactly what she’d need to do to manage the crisis, which seems to be a part of her involuntary routine.
Popular on VarietyThrough screenwriter Simon Uttley’s extensive character building, we learn that taking care of Michael has fallen on Joey before while they were growing up in a neglectful home — a responsibility she hasn’t always navigated well. Still, the hardships of her childhood have made Joey a flexible person in more ways than one — both physically, when she had to sneak around their house (in a brief part, Poppy Townsend White is terrific as the young Joey), and emotionally, having to adapt to the dramatic fluctuations of her life on a daily basis. Plus, she is conveniently ex-military, with rock-solid stamina.
In other words, in John McClane’s absence, Joey is exactly the kind of person you’d want as an outside ally and witness if your building were to get invaded by terrorists who take hundreds of hostages to execute their wicked plan. In “Cleaner,” the extremists that attack the energy company whose windows Joey is hired to scrub call themselves “Earth Revolution,” entering the building under the guise of masked dancers hired to perform at the company’s gala. The eco-terrorism collective has two polar-opposite leaders. On the more humane side is the level-headed Marcus (Clive Owen, with a puzzlingly short screen time), who’s in this to expose the evil corporation’s environmental wrongdoings to the public. The other leader, Noah (Taz Skylar), isn’t quite as noble in his purpose: He’s in it to kill despite Marcus’s protests.
There is something oddly delightful about a movie that leans into some basic and cheesy ’80s-action-movie machinations — good guys, bad guys, innocent corporate hostages, a rouge hero — and so on. But the plot still feels like a miscalculation due to Uttley’s haphazard misstep of shoehorning environmental concerns into the story. Despite the script’s insistence on making Noah a murderous evil baddie, Earth Revolution arguably has a valid point about the company they target on this side of the 21st Century. As such, you can’t help but wonder if the film would have gained something had it dropped its misguided and paper-thin attempt to tackle eco-terrorism, and made the bad guys anything other than environmentalists who aren’t promoting their cause in the right way.
What it lacks thematically, “Cleaner” makes up for through Campbell’s clockwork handling of the material, as someone who’s steered the likes of “GoldenEye,” “The Mask of Zorro,” and “Casino Royale” in the past. While there is nothing especially surprising or new here, being in the hands of a capable action director provides some popcorn comfort. And Ridley is more than game for every challenge thrown her way across capably choreographed fight sequences and quieter moments, like when she partners up with a competent cop (Ruth Gemmell). While the depth of their allyship doesn’t quite feel believable, Gemmell and Ridley do their best to sell it as part of Campbell’s collection of action tropes.
At the end, the main attraction is Ridley, whose vigor and charisma are unmissable on a screen of any size. The force is strong with her.
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Twitter (X), Inc. was an American social media company based in San Francisco, California, which operated and was named for its flagship social media network prior to its rebrand as X. In addition to Twitter, the company previously operated the Vine short video app and Periscope livestreaming service
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