Should I Watch.? 'Cleaner' (2025)

Cleaner is an action thriller film released in 2025 and was directed by veteran Martin Campbell. The film is set in London and follows a former soldier, now working as a high-rise window cleaner, who finds herself caught up in a violent hostage situation involving environmental terrorists. The film stars Daisy Ridley, Clive Owen, Taz Skylar and Matthew Tuck. The film heavily draws upon influences from other action films, most notably Die Hard but critics were mostly unimpressed. To date, the film has earned a less-than-stellar $1.3 million worldwide and didn't even receive a theatrical release in the UK where it premiered on TV three months after its US release.

Twenty years after their abusive upbringing, former soldier Joanna "Joey" Locke is forced to collect her autistic brother Michael from his care home after he's accused of exposing their bad practises and kicked out. However, she is unable to take him back to her place as she's running seriously late for her job so she instead takes him to One Canada Square, where she works as a high-rise window cleaner. Leaving Michael in the care of a security guard, Joey just about makes it on time and is reluctantly ordered by her supervisor to work extra hours cleaning the windows high above the streets of London far below.

The building is the headquarters of Agnian Energy who are preparing to throw a lavish gala on site to celebrate the launch of a new, environmentally-friendly PR campaign. As the guests arrive and the champagne begins to flow, the evening's masked entertainers turn up a little late but sadly, things quickly unravel. To everyone's shock and horror, the masked interlopers are members of an eco-activist protest group lead by Marcus Blake. They incapacitate the guests with knock-out gas and take control of the building, leaving Joey stuck outside the building on an elevated platform. As Michael sneaks off and hides, Joey takes it upon herself to rescue the hostages - unaware that a far greater danger than anyone supposes is waiting for her inside...

It's a shame that Cleaner can't manage to live up to the standards of those that went before it because there are one or two elements that deserve to be in a better film than this. Firstly, Ridley - who has worked hard to escape her breakthrough role as Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens - does well as a working-class, rough-around-the-edges woman struggling to make a life for herself on civvy street. She obviously has experience in action scenes and when the film lets her loose, she actually does surprisingly well despite her slight frame and size disadvantage. Owen does his best impression of Alan Rickman's suave Hans Gruber (minus the accent, obviously), playing an almost cult-like leader with charisma to spare and a much higher purpose than his actions suggest. Sadly, he doesn't get enough screen time in the role - possibly as a result of the film's restrictive budget.

Unfortunately, such blessings are fairly few and far between. The film is a pretty blatant rip-off of Die Hard, sticking so rigidly to the well-established formula that I was shocked that Ridley didn't end up crawling through air vents in a dirty vest. Cleaner takes its time to build up to the meat-and-potatoes of the plot, slowly building up its cast of characters and its plot contrivances before exploding into life and wrapping things up far too quickly for my liking. We seem to spend much of the film waiting for the fisticuffs and shoot-outs to arrive and when they do, there is almost a sense of relief - but then it rushes to the ending, piling plot holes on top of plot holes and leaving the audience feeling short-changed.

• Ridley is not the only cast member with a link to Star Wars. Lee Boardman, who plays co-owner of Agnian Energy Gerald Milton, played the character Kravas on the spin-off TV show Andor.
• In October 2023, the film was reported to be filming at The Shard, a tower that was opened in 2012 and overtook One Canada Square as London's tallest building. It is unknown why the decision was made to switch locations.
• Interestingly, Joey is apparently left hanging outside the building at a height of fifty stories. One Canada Square is only fifty storeys high at its peak so there shouldn't be additional floors seen above Joey when she's stuck on the platform. By comparison, Nakatomi Plaza (as seen in Die Hard) only has 35 floors.
  
• The film's title could be interpreted as a pun as not only is Joey herself a cleaner but Agnian Energy is keen to pursue a cleaner image, promoting itself as a green energy supplier.

If this film had been released twenty years ago, it might have been welcomed much more than it currently is. Action thrillers like this were still popular at the time, even if The Matrix came along and shook things up considerably. Indeed, Campbell himself was doing this back then as he reinvented the Bond franchise with Daniel Craig's debut as 007 in Casino Royale - a fact that the film's publicity proudly states. Unfortunately, the genre has greatly moved on thanks to the blockbusting success of the John Wick series which makes this film feel even more old fashioned. The film has no new ideas to offer and due to the low budget, there are some noticeably shoddy effects and green-screen at times which also makes this feel derivative of Die Hard - which is nearly forty years old at this point.

There are some other issues as well. Owen's charismatic villain is overshadowed by Skylar's psychotic skinhead who never feels as threatening or engaging a presence. The film's narrative is all over the place as characters are somehow able to speak to each other despite distance, bulletproof glass or even knowing each other such as Gemmell's uninspired copper on the ground casually chatting to Joey after she's been framed as a suspect (and the fact that she's dangling off the side of a skyscraper). Speaking of which, there is no sense of tension because you never believe Joey is actually up that high - her hair is barely ruffled by the wind and she never needs to shout. On a personal note, I was also frustrated by Tuck's depiction of Joey's autistic brother - despite having an occasional air of authenticity, it quickly falls apart as he displays an unhealthy interest in all things Marvel (inexplicably carrying Thor's hammer at all times) and is able to function as a hacker as well because that's what all autistic people can do, obviously! It's symptomatic of a film that has no new ideas or concepts and feels like a very lazy retread of dozens of films we've all seen before, almost all of them done better.

Cleaner is an adequate but unspectacular effort, one that feels like a cheap imitation of Die Hard but without any of that film's exhilaration or excitement. It displays flashes of quality but not enough to justify spending any money on. At least it doesn't take too much of your time up and reminds us that Ridley could and perhaps should be given more action roles, should she choose to accept them. But as a standalone movie, it just doesn't scrub up all that well.

Great For: action film fans keen to see such a film in London (niche but there you go...), people with not a lot of time to see a longer film, reminding us of Ridley's skills as a performer

Not So Great For: anyone looking for originality or something different, British film fans who will scoff at the sheer implausibility of it all, authentic portrayals of autism

There have been no shortage of action movies set in London over the years, from bullet-laden efforts like London Has Fallen to the nitrous-fuelled mayhem of Fast & Furious 6. The trouble is, these sort of films rarely work because the UK simply doesn't have the same gun culture that we see every day in the US. I was reminded of another film that people won't remember, a faintly daft thriller called Welcome To The Punch which wasted its stellar cast in a film that wanted to be taken seriously so badly that it was laughable. This inability to depict a serious action film in the UK was even parodied in Hot Fuzz, a film that brought Michael Bay-style violence and excess to a sleepy village in the West Country. On the whole, I think our nation's capital is far better in things like Paddington and Notting Hill instead of simply being a change of scenery for more typical Hollywood action fare.

What's doubly frustrating about Cleaner is that we know the people involved can do better. Ridley's performance as Rey in the recent Star Wars films (The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and The Rise Of Skywalker) was a genuine highlight of an otherwise forgettable trilogy and she has since further her career with well-received performances in dramas like Young Woman And The Sea and Sometimes I Think About Dying. Campbell too has had much success in the past with two Bond films on his resume (GoldenEye and the aforementioned Casino Royale, both of which were seen as highlights for the franchise) as well as reviving interest in the all-but-forgotten Zorro character thanks to The Mask Of Zorro and the TV and cinema versions of Edge Of Darkness. However, his career has been blighted since his disastrous Green Lantern and his reputation has struggled to recover ever since. At the age of 81 (at time of writing), it's unclear how many more films we'll see from him and it would be a shame if this were the last.