3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Cleaner

2025, Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) -- download

Die Hard but she's a window cleaner. I mean, really, its essentially that. She even has a person on the inside she has to protect and is in contact with a cop on the ground, and the cop has to deal with trigger-happy SWAT agents, and the Bad Guys say they are there for one thing, but are really there for another thing. No duct crawling though.

Joey's (Daisy Ridley, Murder on the Orient Express) the window cleaner in a big building in downtown London. I guess its possible that buildings owned by Musk-level moguls have permanent cleaning staff for their 75+ stories of windows? But none of that matters; all we care about is that she is doing the job, she's shit at the job (good a window cleaning, shit at working), and that she has a brother on the spectrum. There's a history there, wherein their father beat on him for being "a freak" while she just sat with her feet dangling out the window. So, now she's making up for it by taking care of him and being very very insolent with people.

The fact she pisses people off, including her supervisor, is why she is stuck outside the building when the Bad Guys, disguised as catering staff, infiltrate the party on the top floor. The CEO brothers are announcing one thing or another, about how their company cares and is not polluting everything. The Bad Guys are eco-activists, but not ones who have ever crossed a line (i.e. hurt people), but they have a point to make. Their leader wants to push the envelope, threaten the CEO Brothers (truly, they are the real Bad Guys here) into giving a confession to all their dirty little secrets, which will be broadcast by a hacker with a cool haircut. Exceeeept, some of their number are a bit more extreme and actually just want to blow the building up, to make a nihilistic point.

I wonder at my trend of late, to be pretty verbose in the setup of the movie and its characters, but.... I trail off in the rest, not presenting a proper "recap".

But Joey is not just a window washer, she's also an ex-military type who was booted from the army for being an insubordinate ass. And the angry people inside are ... well, eco-activists with guns. Its not surprising when she starts kicking their asses. What is surprising is when their leader Marcus Blake (Clive Owen, Gemini Man) is killed and sociopathic nutjob "antihumanist" Noah (Taz Skylar, One Piece) supplants him as leader of this little escapade. Noah also happens to have been Joey's coworker in window cleaning. Noah doesn't so much as want to expose the evils of the corporation as he wants to kill a lot of people. Meanwhile Joey has linked up with the negotiator on the ground, who has to deal with eager policemen with lots of guns, and ... well, you know how these movies go.

Interesting note: Joey's brother Michael is played by Matthew Tuck, an actually neurodivergent actor in his first role.

I fully admit, and I did in the first paragraph, this one was derivative to the max and if we were still in the video store era, it probably would have been a tier-2 or 3 shelf movie, something people would take if all the new release or "good movies" were gone. But I rather enjoyed its nonsense. I highly doubt they are trying to position Daisy as the next female action star but it at least gives her another in her cabinet of curiosities. Die Hard was also considered a B-lister, and really it still is, but it was embraced and while I don't expect this one to become a regular rewatch-er, it was decent enough.

Didn't you just bemoan the state of so many movies just being "all right" ? We do need another "John Wick" surprise or at least something so terrible it becomes a giggle fest.