Overview
When a group of radical activists take over an energy company's annual gala, seizing 300 hostages, an ex-soldier turned window cleaner suspended 50 storeys up on the outside of the building must save those trapped inside, including her younger brother.
Jason Statham is a window cleaner….
….what?
….Oh!
….Wasn’t he free?
….Okay, start again…
Daisy Ridley is a window cleaner named Joey who works for a large (and corrupt) energy corporation named Agnian, spending her working hours suspended outside the highrise building of the corporation at Canary Wharf, and her off-duty time caring for her autistic brother, Michael. However, after Michael is booted out of another care system due to disruptive behavior, Joey is forced to bring him along with her to work, asking him to wait for her in the lobby. But, talk about bad luck that this happens on the same day that an environmental activist group take the building hostage during a shareholder gala, and all whilst Joey is suspended outside. With her brother trapped inside, and a death toll mounting, Joey must use her special military training to save her brother and bring down the eco-terrorists who take their crusade too far.
Directed by Martin Campbell – he of Goldeneye, the Zorro films, and Casino Royale (among other films) – Cleaner is as generic as you can get, with a formula that tries desperately to be a British Die Hard, but instead simply manages to only achieve status of, “better than most Sky Original films” (which is not really praise). By the end of the first act I genuinely wondered if Statham wasn’t available as this plays pretty similar to the “everyday worker with special forces training” cliche that he churns out.
To be fair, Daisy Ridley holds her own well, both in the lively banter with colleagues, the touching drama with her brother, and the slickly presented action on offer. She has a roguish charm to her that fleshes out her otherwise archetypal role, and makes it easy to connect with – especially thanks to the heartfelt early scenes as she takes care of her brother. Campbell may not be on top form here, but he still fashions together all the elements well enough to impress, even if it does suffer from an artificial gloss at times, and also stretches credibility at various points when Joey can manage to eavesdrop on conversations from outside the (I assume) pretty well soundproofed highrise external windows.
However, Ridley and Matthew Tuck (played Michael) aside, the rest of the cast are lacklustre at best, with a particularly wasted appearance by Clive Owen coming over as a ‘token name’ insertion for the poster. With characters that have the depth of a puddle of water, these are just generic tropes of parts thrown out with little care, and drag the film down as a result. Maybe 20 years ago something this generic could have stood out, but in a world where Statham and Neeson churn this type of faire out on a regular basis, Cleaner simply doesn’t have the strength to compete with them and just vanishes into the background.
It’s about as good as Sky films get these days, and at least has a reasonably short-ish run-time, but Ridley is much better than this film deserves, and really needs to focus her talents in more deserving content.