Cleaner Film Review

If ever you needed to bring your light saber to work this was the day, Rey. Oh wait - not Rey - just a window washer. From the outside. We have guys who do that here at my condo and I feel dizzy when they get to my windows on the 17th floor. They were actually doing it when the earthquake hit recently. No casualties thankfully. That must have been scary as hell for them. My acrophobia isn't just in real life, but I get it watching movies as well. Every time a character looks over the edge of a high rise, my stomach does a flip. So, I spent the first half of this film needing a paper bag to breath in. Ok, it wasn't that bad, but I definitely had the jitters.

I was very happy when the film finally goes back inside and our heroine only has loads of men trying to kill her. This is yet another Die Hard wannabe, but as I have mentioned in other reviews, I love these films. I could watch them all the time and one of these days I need to put together a list of them. Though I expect, someone already has. They add a few things to this one though to make it slightly different. A sweet gender switch. Most of these types of films have a male as the heroic figure but here we get Daisy Ridley of Star Wars fame as Joey - a window cleaner but fortunately for the hostages one with military training. The killing kind. They also throw in an autistic brother who is in the building. I get the reason why but not sure if it worked. Maybe too much of it.

An energy company is throwing a gala party to celebrate their success and their commitment to clean energy. Of course it is rubbish. They are corrupt, dirty, killers. It says something about our current conditions that probably no one thinks that it unlikely. This is taking place in jolly old England which accounts for the nice accents. Ridley in her short hair and Keira Knightly mouth is very appealing. More so when she is killing the bad guys. She is stuck outside cleaning windows - bird attack on the 51st floor her rat ass bastard boss tells her - but that is ok - he is dead soon. An environmental terrorist group takes over with demands that all the people at the party confess their sins. Good. At this point, most of us are on their side. Bring on the Revolution. But then a more radical group silence the moderates and have much nastier plans. Isn't that always the fate of revolutions?

The new leader is her friend Noah (Taz Skylar) who seemed so nice when we first met him cleaning windows next to Joey. He is but he wants to kill all the humans on earth. Thanos x 2. Joey is in contact with the Superintendent of Police (Ruth Gemmell) down below and it turns into a clone of Die Hard as she finally gets in and then really starts cleaning - up the bad guys. We have all seen enough of these films to know how they are going to end - only disappointed that she had no Bruce Willis type quips - no "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker" with a polite British accent. This is directed by Martin Campbell. His Bond films were a while back, but with lesser materials I still like everything he has done recently. This, Memory, Protege and Foreigner. Not great films but very solid and entertaining, No one will remember this film in a year with so many other female action films coming out, but this is a good one. If you had never seen Die Hard and all its clones and sequels, you would probably be more impressed with this, but I will happily take a dozen more of Daisy Ridley.