March 11, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Martin Campbell
Culture Representation: Taking place in London, the action film “Cleaner” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people, Latin people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A window cleaner, who left the U.K. miltary in disgrace, becomes the main person who can stop a group of terrorists who have taken hostages at a corrupt corporation that is in the energy business.
Culture Audience: “Cleaner” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of stars Daisy Ridley and Clive Owen and don’t mind watching a silly and derivative action flick.
“Cleaner” starts off as a promising thriller that’s obviously inspired by “Die Hard,” with a hero battling office-invading terrorists. But as the movie goes along, it becomes too ridiculous to take. Everything devolves into corny dreck with uneven acting.
Directed by Martin Campbell, “Cleaner” was written by Matthew Orton, Simon Uttley and Paul Andrew Williams. The movie, which takes place in London, has a story that happens over the course of a 24-hour period. (“Cleaner” was actually filmed in London and Malta.) The snappy dialogue that’s in the first 20 minutes of “Cleaner” all but disappears and is replaced by mind-numbing nonsense.
The protagonist in “Cleaner” is Joanna “Joey” Locke (played by Daisy Ridley), a feisty and foul-mouthed former U.K. Army soldier who now works as a skyscraper cleaner. Joey’s military career abruptly ended when she got into a fight that violated military rules. Depending on who you believe in the story, Joey either quit the military or she was dishonorably discharged.
Joey has a younger brother named Michael (played by Matthew Tuck), who has autism. Michael is a computer whiz who likes hacking into computers. (And you can bet these hacking skills will be used later in the movie.) In the beginning of the movie, Michael has been expelled from the home care facility where he was living because he’s the prime suspect in leaking confidential information about the home care facility to the media. Whoever leaked the information exposed some of the facility’s shady business practices.
Joey is seen storming into the home care office to pick up Michael after he’s been expelled. She gets angry at the on-duty administrator (played by Kate Nichols) by saying that the facility has no right to expel Michael without proof that he was the one who leaked the information. The administrator is unmoved and says Michael has to leave the property immediately. Later, Michael privately confesses to Joey that he did exactly what he was accused of doing.
Michael has nowhere else to go, and Joey is already running late for her job, so she reluctantly takes Michael with her to the high-rise building where she works. The building is the headquarters of a major corporation called Agnian Energy. On the way there, Joey and Michael race against time by going on a series of bus rides in a rather funny sequence where Michael tries and fails to get Joey to stop cursing so much.
Joey tells Michael that he can live with her until they can find a new place for him to live. Michael is thrilled about it, because he likes living with Joey. However, Joey doesn’t try to hide that she’s not keen on Michael living with her because of his high-maintenance needs. Joey flatly refuses Michael’s request to help him get the same job as a window cleaner. Joey tells Michael no because she says her boss Derek (played by Gavin Fleming) is a jerk.
It’s the late afternoon when Joey arrives at the Agnian Energy building. Joey tells Michael to wait for her in the building lobby until her work shift ends. She asks a lobby security guard named Big Ron (played by Russell De Rozario) to look after Joey, who doesn’t like feeling that someone has to babysit him. And as soon as Joey asks someone to look after Michael, you just know something is going to happen where Michael is going to slip out of the minder’s sight.
The two CEOs of Agnian Energy are brothers Gerald Milton (played by Lee Boardman) and Geoffrey Milton (played by Rufus Jones), who have opposite personalities. Older brother Gerald is a cocaine-snorting bully who cares more about being hedonistic on the job than actually doing the job. Geoffrey is the level-headed “brains” of the operation and does most of the real CEO work. Gerald and Geoffrey have opposite personalities, but they are both very corrupt.
How much of a nasty person is Gerald? Gerald, Joey and a pregnant housekeeper named Halina (played by Sol E. Romero) are all on a crowded elevator together. Gerald looks at Halina in disgust and tells her: “You better not fucking drop now. You should be at home.” Joey quips in response: “Maybe if you paid her proper maternity leave, she would be.” Gerald later asks a subordinate if Joey can be fired for being “lippy” to Gerald. Gerald is told no.
Agnian Energy is having a big corporate party in the building that evening. Several of the company’s investors and other business associates will be attending this party. Because Joey was late to work, Derek makes her work one hour past the end of her work shift, after it gets dark. And it’s here where the movie starts to fall off the rails because of how illogical it is to have a skyscraper window cleaner work outside at night when it’s too dark to see how clean the glass is.
Joey is outside on a platform and cleaning the building windows at night when she sees the masked terrorists who invade this office party. The six armed people who storm into the building are wearing green goblin masks and have an agenda: Take all the party attendees hostage and make them confess their business crimes on a livestream feed.
Who are these terrorists? They’re a radical group of environmentalists who think Agnian Energy is responsible for illegal pollution and other business crimes. The group is led by Marcus Blake (played by Clive Owen), who doesn’t want anyone killed during this office invasion.
Someone else in this group of terrorists has other ideas and gets in a power struggle with Marcus. This challenger is Noah Santos (played by Taz Skylar), a nihilist who says he hates all people and thinks the hostages at this party deserve to be murdered. Noah is very much a cartoonish villain, whose dialogue becomes more unhinged (and more cringeworthy) as the movie stumbles along from one stupid scene to the next.
If you know about “Die Hard” or other movies that are trying to be like “Die Hard,” then you can easily predict what will happen for the rest of “Cleaner,” which is a disappointing dud. The fight scenes are often ludicrous. And there’s even an idiotic scene where Joey is on her skyscraper platform outside while Noah forces her to shoot a gun at innocent bystanders below on the street.
The two main law enforcement officers on the scene are Detective Sergeant Claire Hume (played by Ruth Gemmell) and Detective Inspector Khan (played by Ray Fearon), who clash with each other over some decisions during this hostage crisis. Claire is the chief negotiator. Her colleague Khan doesn’t think she’s aggressive enough with the terrorists.
Ridley gives it her all to portray an action hero, but her acting efforts cannot overcome a terrible screenplay and sloppy direction. Owen (who is not in the movie for as much you might think) gives a mediocre performance, as do most of the other cast members. There isn’t one single plot development in “Cleaner” that is original or clever. Simply put: The filmmaking for “Cleaner” is as messy and unappealing as a muddy window.
Quiver Distribution released “Cleaner” in U.S. cinemas on February 21, 2025.
