{"id":11551,"date":"2025-03-26T23:49:22","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T03:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=11551"},"modified":"2025-03-26T23:49:22","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T03:49:22","slug":"cleaner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/03\/26\/cleaner\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleaner"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Cleaner<\/strong> (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Quiver Distribution\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 98 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language throughout, brief drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Martin Campbell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Simon Uttley, Paul Andrew Williams and Matthew Orton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Tom Hodge\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Eigil Bryld\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 21, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Daisy Ridley, Clive Owen, Taz Skylar, Matthew Tuck, Ruth Gemmell, Rufus Jones, Lee Boardman, Stella Stocker, Flavia Watson, Ray Fearon, Howard Charles, Tom Boney, Sol E. Romero, Russell De Rozario.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $1.2M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0To fully enjoy the British-made Die Hard knock-off Cleaner<\/strong>, you have to accept the silly and derivative premise without question. If you try to bring logic into it, you\u2019re just going to ruin it. It\u2019s best just to sit back, turn your brain off and enjoy the ride.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Cleaner<\/strong> benefits greatly from a director who knows his way around an action picture. Martin Campbell\u2019s resume includes two James Bond outings, GoldenEye (1995) and Casino Royale (2006), The Mask of Zorro (1998) and its sequel The Legend of Zorro (2005), the underrated Jackie Chan revenge thriller The Foreigner (2017) and the Liam Neeson vehicle Memory (2022). He\u2019s very good at what he does. He continues this streak with Cleaner<\/strong> which stars Daisy Ridley (Rey from the Star Wars sequels) as a window cleaner who takes on terrorists attempting a hostile takeover at a high-rise building.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ridley plays Joey Locke, a highly trained ex-soldier having a bad day. Her autistic older brother Michael (Tuck) has just been kicked out of his ninth care facility. She literally has no one to leave him with so she has to take him to work with her. She\u2019s late which means she\u2019s going to catch s*** the whole day from her dick of a boss. She works as a window cleaner at a tall building in the heart of London, a job that requires her to be suspended high above the ground at dizzying heights. It\u2019s a good thing she\u2019s not acrophobic.<\/p>\n

\u00a0She\u2019s just about to end her shift when eco-terrorists show up at a gala being held by the billion-dollar energy company that owns the building. They take over the building leaving Joey hanging around outside. They take everybody hostage- executives, guests, staff and residents- with the intention of forcing the company to publicly admit their ecological misdeeds. Michael is not among the hostages. He was wandering around the building when it all went down. Still, it\u2019s only a matter of time before he\u2019s found. Joey has to figure out a way to get inside and rescue him. While she\u2019s at it, she may as well try to take down the terrorists and save everyone else too.<\/p>\n

\u00a0SPOILER ALERT! <\/strong>Clive Owen (Children of Men) plays Marcus, the leader of the activist group behind the takeover. At least he is until he has an ideological disagreement with a less stable member of the group, Joey\u2019s co-worker Noah (Skylar, One Piece) who wants to achieve the same end by less civilized means. In other words, he\u2019s a violent psycho. As for Marcus, why don\u2019t I just say he makes an early exit and leave it at that?<\/p>\n

\u00a0And where are the police while all this is going on? Why, they\u2019re outside trying to gain control of the situation, where else? It\u2019s an exercise in futility, of course. Noah has them over a barrel. That\u2019s what he thinks anyway. He knows that Joey is hanging from a rope outside the building, but doesn\u2019t believe she\u2019ll be able to breach. The police official in charge, Director Claire Hills (Gemmell, Bridgerton), thinks otherwise. She\u2019s counting on Joey to help save the day with her specialized military training and can-do spirit.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I honestly wish they\u2019d make more movies like Cleaner<\/strong>. It\u2019s the kind of medium-budgeted action flick that used to play in multiplexes in the 90s. I remember spending many a Friday or Saturday night watching such movies with friends at the local AMC. It doesn\u2019t rely on spectacle or $150M worth of crappy CGI effects. It earns its thrills through stunt work and fight sequences that aren\u2019t edited beyond comprehension. It\u2019s as old school as an action movie can get without the makers going back in time and filming it retroactively.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ridley keeps proving herself a more than capable leading lady. She endows Joey with strength and brazenness that shows up before the terrorists do. Standing with a pregnant friend and co-worker, she comments about the lack of benefits available to expectant employees within earshot of the two big bosses. She\u2019s got balls! Owen isn\u2019t around long enough to say much of anything about his performance. He\u2019s good with what little he\u2019s given to do. Skylar makes a good crazed baddie, but he\u2019s nowhere near as terrifying as Hans Gruber. NOBODY is.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Cleaner<\/strong> is hardly what I\u2019d call a refined action movie, but it still has plenty to offer what with Campbell\u2019s assured direction and Ridley\u2019s committed performance. It\u2019s fairly predictable and routine. There are no surprises or unexpected plot twists except maybe for Clive\u2019s early exit. It\u2019s still a fun action flick that makes for ideal viewing on a Friday or Saturday night.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cleaner (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Quiver Distribution\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 98 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language throughout, brief drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Martin Campbell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Simon Uttley, Paul Andrew Williams and Matthew Orton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Tom Hodge\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Eigil Bryld\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 21, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Daisy Ridley, Clive Owen, Taz Skylar, Matthew Tuck, Ruth Gemmell, Rufus Jones, Lee Boardman, Stella […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Cleaner-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11551"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11568,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11551\/revisions\/11568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}