In 1988, John McClane saved the Nakatomi Plaza skyscraper from 12 terrorists on Christmas Eve in the classic action movie Die Hard. Since then, we’ve gotten tons of movies about heroes saving places from bad guys. We’ve gotten Die Hard on a bus (Speed), Die Hard on a plane (Air Force One), Die Hard on a boat (Under Siege), Die Hard in the White House (Olympus Has Fallen), and more. But this new action movie, Cleaner, dares to do the unthinkable: Die Hard in a skyscraper.
It’s never a good sign when nearly every review of your movie is comparing it to another movie. It’s gotten to a point where journalists have even brought up the film to lead actress Daisy Ridley. I watched this movie at a screening with a Q&A with Ridley afterwards and the moderator made a point of wearing a Die Hard T-shirt while interviewing her. If that doesn’t clue you in on how derivative this movie is, I don’t know what will. Even the aforementioned movies that follow the so-called “Die Hard formula” manage to not only change up the formula a bit but be a decent movie on its own (particularly Speed). Cleaner does neither. This is a bland, familiar clone of films we’ve seen before.
It may seem harsh, but I can’t get behind a movie that’s so lacking in originality despite the intention to be a fun, exciting action film. I’ll give credit where credit is due: there is an attempt to flesh out the characters. The main character, Joey (Ridley), grew up with an abusive father and now often looks after her autistic brother Micheal (Matthew Tuck). The first half hour is spent developing the characters and getting us to care for them and their relationship. It also shows Joey’s personality and her willingness to stand up for herself and for others.
Similar to Skyscraper, the recent Die Hard ripoff with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Cleaner plays around with your fear of heights. Joey is a window cleaner at a building and I don’t think most people reading this would want that job. During one of her shifts, a bunch of bad guys arrive and crash a party. This reminds me a lot of another movie where a character happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time as a bunch of bad guys take over a party in a building and take the party guests hostage. This movie is one of the most unoriginal films of recent memory.
Much like John McClane, she spends a good amount of time looking for help as she knows her loved one is trapped inside with them. But there’s a key difference here: Joey spends nearly the entire movie trapped on the scaffolding platform outside the building. The trailer was quite deceptive in making you think Joey would spend the majority of the film in the building taking down the bad guys one by one. But that all happens in the final act. Most of this movie is her standing outside the building.
Now, on paper, this might not seem like a bad idea. It traps our protagonist, keeping her in a situation where there’s no escape, and it separates it quite a bit from Die Hard in that regard. But it’s a change for the worse. Joey is in some physical danger while she’s on the platform, but she’s mostly safe from the villains. To make it worse, even though Micheal is technically in danger because he’s trapped in the building, it’s not like when John McClane’s wife Holly was trapped in the same room as Hans Gruber. Micheal is nearly never in the same room as the antagonists. Both of these details make the danger between the heroes and villains feel less immediate.
Besides the fact that Joey spends most of the movie outside and one key detail surrounding the villain, Cleaner is Die Hard, beat for beat. We have a helicopter that shows up filled with people who see the hero and believe they’re the villain, a dead body hitting the street, a lot of bombs, and a hero who must speak with a police officer and build their trust while keeping them updated on what’s happening in the building. The way the villains are written can also be a bit heavyhanded, as they’re a bunch of climate change activists who have reasons to be targeting the hostages inside. It’s going for the “villains with a point of view” angle, but it can be grating to hear them monologue about something that most audience members would agree with.
Perhaps the most significant issue with having Joey trapped on that scaffolding platform for nearly the entire second act is that she becomes a passive protagonist. Her actions don’t affect the story and the villains’ plan. Die Hard is so compelling because John McClane is the fly in the ointment, the monkey in the wrench, and the pain in the ass. He’s actively ruining the bad guys’ plans. But Joey doesn’t affect them very much until the final act, which is where the movie becomes better, even if it still feels familiar.
Director Martin Campbell has made some exceptional films like GoldenEye, The Mask of Zorro, and Casino Royale. However, his more recent work like Memory and Dirty Angels has failed to impress, and Cleaner is an overly derivative action movie with little to no bite. The best part of this film is the emotional weight between Joey and Micheal, and how Joey won’t leave her brother behind the way she did when she was younger. Ridley turns in a great performance, but this movie disrupts her post-Star Wars streak of excellent movies like Sometimes I Think About Dying, Young Woman and the Sea, and Magpie. Tuck also turns in a good performance.
But ultimately, Cleaner has too many familiar elements to make it worthwhile. There’s no reason to go out to see this movie when you can stream any of the Die Hard movies at home.
SCORE: 4/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 4 equates to “Poor.” The negatives outweigh the positive aspects making it a struggle to get through.
