Cleaner

Bluesky

Down on the streets of London, in the traffic, on the crowded pavements, in that swamp of noise, would one ever notice the words or the cries of window cleaners high up on the sides of skyscrapers? Could you really see them? Noah (Taz Skylar) and Joey (Daisy Ridley) figure that they look like ants clinging to the sides of the building. That’s all the significance that their lives have to the movers and shakers of the world, to the wealthy people who work there and are about to hold a major conference there. Joey tries not to let it get to her. She needs the job. She’s always had to look after herself, and try to find a little resource left over for her autistic brother Michael (Matthew Tuck), who has just been thrown out of yet another residential centre. Noah, however, looks at things a little differently, and he’s preparing to let the whole world know it.

On that particular evening, when a dispute with an annoying boss means Joey just can’t get away when she’s supposed to, when she’s had to leave Michael inside the building in the care of a security guard, there’s a big gala scheduled to take place, with the obnoxious CEOs of Agnian Energy welcoming assorted influential guests. A team of ecological campaigners, their leader played with a familiar combination of authority and grace by Clive Owen, plans to disrupt the event and draw attention to their various kinds of wrongdoing. Unfortunately for him – and numerous other people – he has allowed Noah to infiltrate his team, and Noah is looking not so much for climate justice as for revenge.

We live in an age where nothing is as clear cut as it seemed – or as we could pretend it was – in the action heyday of the Eighties. This is problematic for Cleaner, forcing it to spend time making comparisons and weighing up different moral concerns rather than just getting on with what most viewers will be there for. Some of this is neatly handled, but in places it feels too soft to suit the public mood, relying on old fashioned notions of what will bring about change that wouldn’t be out of place in a kids’ film. This is a volatile age, and cinema is perhaps obliged to tread carefully, but if it loses its power to thrill, what’s the point?

Fortunately there is plenty of action in and around this. Ridley may not be in the top league of current action stars but she can handle herself, and she is at any rate more convincing as a former soldier than she is as a member of the working class. It doesn’t take long for Joey to escape from her spectator seat on the outside of the building, and then she’s rolling and punching and kicking her way through an assortment of bad guys en route to try to save her brother and thwart Noah’s sinister plan.

All of this would mean more if we were given the chance to care a bit more about the hostages – Michael, twee but likeable, is almost all of the film’s heart – but whilst it falls a long way short in the obvious comparisons to Die Hard, Cleaner is competently staged and a fun way to spend a Saturday night.