Cleaner: Needs more polish

Cleaner (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence, brief drug use and frequent profanity

Available via: MAX

By Derrick Bang

This feels like the British response to Die Hard.

 

Director Martin Campbell has plenty of muscular action epics on his résumé, including a pair of Bonds — GoldenEye and Casino Royale — so he’s certainly comfortable with the genre. Alas, the major problem here is that Simon Uttley, Paul Andrew Williams and Matthew Orton’s script wanders during the first two acts, making us wait too long to get to the “good stuff.”

 

Joey (Daisy Ridley) desperately tries to break a shatter-proof glass window, in order to
gain entry to the high-rise building that is under siege by eco-terrorists.

Even so, the story establishes a nice bond between Joey (Daisy Ridley) and her autistic older brother, Michael (Matthew Tuck), which has a sweet payoff in the climactic third act.

A brief prologue shows adolescent Joey (Poppy Townsend White) growing up in an abusive household, where she has developed Spider-Man-style wall-climbing skills as a means of fleeing her father’s outbursts. Flash-forward 20 years; Joey has blossomed into a tough woman with a hair-trigger aversion to bad behavior by men. Her potential career with the British Army’s Special Reconnaissance Regiment concluded abruptly after she beat up a misogynistic fellow soldier.

 

Her current job as a window cleaner at London’s One Canada Square — the UK’s third-tallest building — is the latest in a series of dead-end jobs. Her inability to maintain a stable lifestyle is mirrored by her brother, a hacker savant who has just been bounced from his ninth care facility placement. She’s therefore forced to bring him to work on this fateful day, and parks him in the building lobby. (Really, she should know better.)

 

In an upstairs ballroom, Agnian Energy is touting its clean, planet-friendly credentials during a shareholder gala hosted by CEOs Geoffrey Milton (Rufus Jones) and his piggish brother Gerald (Lee Boardman). The party is crashed by Marcus Blake (Clive Owen) and fellow members of his radical Earth Revolution eco-activists; they’re determined to expose the Miltons as hypocrites whose company has made its millions via heinous pollution and razing of pristine forest land.

 

Although terrifying for the guests, this activist action is somewhat reasonable — given Agnian’s truly deplorable behavior — until Blake’s control is usurped by one of his violently unhinged Earth Revolution associates: radical antihumanist Lucas Vander (Taz Skylar). Then things get really nasty.

 

Joey, stuck outside the building, witnesses the whole thing ... and can do nothing.

 

Worse yet, when she resourcefully figures out a way to alert police, her actions are spotted by Vander, who calls 999 and claims that she’s a terrorist.

 

This is when the script goes off the rails, because that’s an eyebrow-lifting contrivance too many.

The Protégé: Solid action chops

The Protégé (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong bloody violence, profanity and sexual candor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Revenge thrillers are a lot more interesting when the characters involved have actual personalities, as opposed to being one-dimensional rage machines.

 

With respect to the latter, Wrath of Man is a recent case in point: sheer boredom.

 

With a successful assignment behind them, Moody (Samuel L. Jackson) and Anna
(Maggie Q) turn their attention to a long-dormant mystery ... little realizing the
consequences of this seemingly innocuous investigation.

Happily, The Protégé is cut from superior cloth. Scripter Richard Wenk understands solid character development — he gave us both Denzel Washington Equalizer entries, among others — and director Martin Campbell has two gilt-edged Bonds under his belt, in addition to 2017’s terrific Jackie Chan vehicle, The Foreigner.

If star Maggie Q were a better actress, the results here would be similarly noteworthy. Sadly, her thespic limitations are a distraction, particularly when in the company of seasoned scene-stealers such as Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton.

 

Following a brief prologue that tips its hat to the core premise in 1994’s Léon: The Professional, we’re introduced to Anna (Maggie Q) and Moody (Jackson). They run a rather unusual extermination business, with high financial returns for the successful removal of two-legged cockroaches. They’re always successful.

 

Indeed, Moody taught Anna everything he knows. And she was an eager pupil.

 

By day, she’s an antiquarian book dealer — intelligent, refined and shrewd — with an adorable street-corner London shop. She also spends as much time as possible with Moody, whom she adores as a surrogate father. She’s troubled by the implications of his relentless coughing jags, but maintains a neutral face while (for example) celebrating his 70th birthday with a particularly special gift. (Guitar geeks will salivate.)

 

An old case has been nagging Moody; he asks her to investigate somebody who went off-grid back in the 1990s. Back in her shop, Anna is approached by a cultivated and sophisticated gentleman who introduces himself as Michael Rembrandt (Keaton). He also knows books; they quote Edgar Allan Poe to each other. Their banter is superficially flirty, but the undertone is tense. Deadly.

 

Keaton makes excellent use of his arched eyebrows and condescending, reptilian gaze. Campbell wisely lingers on it.

 

Rembrandt departs; Anna watches him thoughtfully. (Credit where due, Maggie Q does contemplative thoughtfulness pretty well. Her line deliveries, alas, are another matter.)

 

Hours later, all hell breaks loose.

The Foreigner: Not to be ignored

The Foreigner (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for violence, profanity and some sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.13.17

This film likely isn’t on your radar.

It should be.

Irish Deputy Minister Liam Hennessy (Pierce Brosnan, right) is kind enough to grant some
time to Quan Ngoc Minh (Jackie Chan), who hopes to learn the identity of the terrorists
who killed his daughter, back in London. The meeting ... does not go well.

Director Martin Campbell and scripter David Marconi have transformed prolific British thriller author Stephen Leather’s 1992 novel, The Chinaman, into a crackerjack espionage drama: an absolutely perfect vehicle for star Jackie Chan, shrewdly playing a character his actual age (63 years young).

And while it’s true that the beloved martial arts sensation no longer hurls himself out of trees, or through multiple plate-glass windows, he still has moves. Plenty of them.

Marconi’s script is a clever update of Leather’s novel, which was written while the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s brutal bombing campaign was climaxing (and which, mercifully, would conclude with a cease-fire in 1997). This big-screen adaptation benefits from taut direction, crisp editing and a devious narrative laden with twists and double-crosses.

And, most of all, from Chan’s captivating portrayal of a character who completely wins our hearts and minds.

The contemporary setting introduces Quan Ngoc Minh (Chan) as a quiet London restaurateur, who dotes on his teenage daughter, Fan (Katie Leung): the sole family member left after a couple of earlier tragedies. Campbell and Marconi deftly sketch their loving relationship during a prologue that feels ominous because of its mundane normality.

Our fears prove justified, when Fan’s enthusiastic dive into a dress shop turns tragic as a terrorist bomb goes off. Credit for the heinous act is claimed by a group calling itself The Authentic IRA.

Although swept into in a maelstrom of grief that threatens to drown him — Chan’s expression and body language are heartbreaking, during these early scenes — Quan patiently, doggedly navigates “proper channels” in an effort to secure a piece of information that he deems naïvely simple: the name, or names, of the bombers.

He finally gains a chat with Commander Richard Bromley (Ray Fearon), head of the British anti-terrorist task force charged with investigating the attack. Although sympathetic, Bromley assures Quan that his team is doing everything possible, and sends him home. But Quan cannot let it rest, much to the mounting concern of his restaurant partner, Lam (Tao Liu), who clearly loves him.