Cleaner is Painfully Unimaginative Action Slop

Cleaner

★ ½

Cleaner is about Joey Locke (Daisy Ridley), who washes the windows of a skyscraper for a living. She has a slightly older, autistic brother named Michael (Matthew Tuck). She’s forced to care for him when he’s kicked out of a facility that’s supposed to take care of him. He’s a skilled hacker, who breached the facility servers and exposed them for fraud. Don’t worry too much about that. It’s mostly there to set up the story and give Joey something to worry about in the film.

The meeting at the facility has made Joey late for work, and she’s nearly fired. She desperately needs this job, especially now that she’s looking after Michael. She’s forced to take Michael to work and has a security guard look after him. The guard is ill-equipped to look after her autistic brother, and Michael wastes no time wandering through the building.

Clive Owen as the activist leader
© 2025 Quiver Distribution

Her work building is run by horrible people who are preparing for a large shareholder party in the top-floor penthouse suite. The shareholders are horrible people too.

While Joey is outside washing windows on a suspended scaffolding, criminal activists storm the top floor and take over the building. These activists are also a miserable bunch, which is a problem for the story, since we are left to not care much for the hostages nor for the activists. Joey also doesn’t care much about the hostages. Her only priority is her brother.

Daisy Ridley and Matthew Tuck
© 2025 Quiver Distribution

She’s also sidelined for most of the movie, even though we’re told she has some mysterious military background. She’s on the scaffold for more than half the movie doing little more than talking to the police on the streets below through her radio.

The film became mundane and boring long before Joey is let loose in the building. There isn’t much left in the film’s runtime at this point, forcing rushed and unimaginative action sequences that are very clunky. I longed for the rest of the movie to be stylized shots of window washing.

Daisy Ridley as Joey Locke
© 2025 Quiver Distribution

Cleaner is directed by Martin Campbell whose credits include Casino Royale and Goldeneye. Both were packed with much more fun and exciting action sequences. In Cleaner, the action, character development and story seem to be afterthoughts.

I thought the premise was interesting. The execution was dreadful.