My immediate thought upon seeing the premise of this movie was about the likelihood of a Special Ops soldier retiring in her early 30s to become a window cleaner. Evidently, the movie’s writers, Simon Uttley, Paul Andrew Williams, and Matthew Orton, alongside director Martin Campbell (last of Dirty Angels), had no problem with that and with her need to call on her military tactics to win the day and be the hero of THE CLEANER. It debuted on HBO on Saturday, June 14, and on Max the day prior.
This tight little 97-minute movie from Britain stars Daisy Ridley of Star Wars fame, Taz Skylar (One Piece), and Clive Owen (A Murder at the End of the World and, of course, THE KNICK). So, what do we have as a plot? Well, it seems Joanna “Joey” Locke (Ridley), after a short military stint, takes care of her older autistic brother, Michael (Matthew Tuck). One day, she is forced to take him to her workplace at One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, where she works as a window cleaner. She is there with her co-worker Noah (Sylar), who is, it turns out, also a radical for an environmental activist group. Inside the tower, there is a hostile takedown happening of a big energy company by that very same activist group, led by Owen’s character. It seems Joanna needs to save the day. She also has to keep her brother safe. She also has to learn of Noah’s hand in the whole affair and yippee-ki-yah.
Oh, wait, that’s another tower siege movie. So, can this action movie hold your attention? Is it intense and cool or not so much? With your subscription to HBO or Max, you can find out. The Hollywood Reporter declared, “Director Campbell clearly knows his way around this sort of material, resulting in some tense, well-staged action sequences that make Cleaner reasonably diverting for its concise running time.” IGN Movies stated, “Continuing his late-career journeyman run of proficient, unremarkable action vehicles, director Martin Campbell offers some reliably, well, clean hand-to-hand combat without showing us anything we haven’t seen before.” Which takes us to RT’s consensus –
