Cleaner review (2025)

Cleaner takes a unique approach to the ‘Die Hard in an insert the locale of your choice’ formula. Daisy Ridley (Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker) trades in her lightsaber for a squeegee as a window cleaner whose office building gets attacked by a group of eco-terrorists.

The police are helpless to intervene on the hostage situation so it’s up to Ridley’s character to save the day. That’s a workable premise and Ridley isn’t exactly typecast as a cursing, wisecrack spewing action hero marking a nice change of pace for her.

Director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, GoldenEye) knows his way around an action thriller putting Cleaner in very capable hands. Clive Owen (Gemini Man) also pops in as the commanding, yet calm leader of the terrorists. Cleaner clearly has all the ingredients needed for a fun, brisk 97-minute action ride with Ridley scaling the building exterior and taking out bad guys.

Unfortunately, Cleaner gets washed out thanks to a script that keeps Ridley away from the bad guys through the film’s first hour. Yes, the final stretch provides some entertaining action segments, but it feels a little too late.

Ridley stars as Joey, a window cleaner working at a prestigious environmental firm. Joey’s work ethic is kinda sketchy as she frequently has to deal with her autistic brother, Michael (Matthew Tuck), who constantly gets kicked out of housing placement centers for hacking into servers and exposing the center’s dirty secrets. For Cleaner, Michael essentially fills the role of the hero’s child that keeps making poor choices that puts the hero at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Joey isn’t exactly a fan of her supervisor, Derek (Gavin Fleming) either thanks to Derek being largely insufferable. Joey’s day starts off bad as she wakes up super late for work and then has to race to get Michael from another center. She gets that done just before Derek makes good on his threat to fire her. With Michael situated in the lobby with the security guard, Joey gets to work cleaning.

Campbell does a solid job of selling the illusion that Joey is chilling in her leather safety belt calmly removing bird poop from the windows. There are some nice shots of Joey looking down and out to the cityscape around her in an engaging, immersive manner.

Fortunately, she’s not completely alone as her pal, Noah (Taz Skyler, One Piece), is also on the outside and far more efficient at the task to remember Joey probably didn’t take the time to pack a lunch.

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On the inside, the head honchos of the company — brothers Geoffrey (Rufus Jones) and Gerald (Lee Boardman) Milton — are prepping for a big gala to celebrate their latest profit margins and conservation efforts. This provides the perfect opening for Marcus (Owen) and his well-trained band of eco-terrorists to crash the party and demand a reckoning for their actions, which are hardly as friendly to the planet as the Miltons pretend.

Marcus and his crew gas the rest of the party goers and force the Miltons and their inner circle of cronies and co-conspirators to read off their true crimes. Joey is stuck on the outside waiting on Derek to raise the Bosun’s chair so she can get inside, get Michael and head out for the night. That doesn’t happen thanks to another member of Marcus’ crew — Noah. This sequence very much plays out like Owen’s role in the Spike Lee thriller, Inside Man, which isn’t a bad way to go, but Noah has higher aspirations and doesn’t want to be No. 2.

Swapping out Skyler for Owen seems like a risk — or at least a more budget-friendly decision — but Skyler makes for a capable main villain just fine. If not a bit over the top as the unhinged zealot. A police force, led by DI Hume (Bridgerton’s Ruth Gemmell), respond giving Joey some contact on the ground while she plots a way to get inside the building to save Michael and the hostages.

Ridley is a likable lead and is perfectly convincing as a window cleaner who has a little background in handling her own against armed terrorists. The action scenes are not a problem with Cleaner. It’s the film’s uninteresting middle act that just feels like a needless barrier before Joey starts taking out the bad guys.

Saving the thrilling, exciting action sequences for the final act was an odd choice as all of the earlier potential suspense and thrills have no impact.

Joey has to get inside the building for any real high stakes (pun intended) to matter. Cleaner is just one long drawn-out appetizer with a quickly rushed through main course.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Photo Credit: Quiver Distribution

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