BEFORE: Right now it's the "calm between the storms", since we wrapped on the NewFest Pride event last night and the Tribeca Festival starts in just two days. I was scheduled for four Tribeca shifts but I left myself available in case someone else calls out, and that just happened, so now I'm down for five shifts over the course of a 12-day event. That's fine, I lost two weeks for vacation and then funeral so I need to catch up and make some money. I was planning to see a matinee of "The Mandalorian and Grogu" on June 9, now I'm going to have to delay that a week and try to catch in on June 16. (There's a discount Tuesday program at AMC). It's all good, that's still 2 weeks before I want to post a review. Anyway, this is why I made skip days and why I said that I'd probably need them during the Tribeca Festival. It's going to be THE PLACE for important new films and also some star-studded tributes, so really it's where I want to be working behind the scenes.
Kalyn Harper carries over from "Playdate".
THE PLOT: Criminal activists hijack a gala, taking 300 hostages. One extremist plans mass murder as a message to the world, but an ex-soldier turned window cleaner works to rescue the hostages.
AFTER: Yeah, this film kind of puts me in a delicate spot - I want to be nice, I want to give it a good review, but that would mean overlooking a few things. But don't get me wrong, it's great that they're making action films with strong female characters, we've seen the "one-man army" formula applied to Jason Statham again and again, also Liam Neeson, Keanu Reeves, Bruce Willis and more recently, Chris Hemsworth and even Bob Odenkirk. One-WOMAN army films are less common, still there's Charlize Theron, Jennifer Lopez, Angelina Jolie and Uma Thurman who have given it a go. So now we have Daisy Ridley as an ex-army Special Forces type who must have aged out of the program and taken a job as a window cleaner on a London skyscraper. Well, I guess, I mean who knows more about rappelling down from high places - but a cleaning job?
There's a bit of wordplay with the title, though because "Cleaner" also could refer to cleaner sources of energy that are being promoted by the corporation that occupies the skyscraper, the Agnian Energy Group, but apparently the company isn't as "clean" as they say they are, because environmental activists infiltrate the company's gala presentation, disguised as an Asian dance group, presumably the evening's entertainment. However they're wearing masks and also are protected from the knockout gas that puts many of the party's guests to sleep, leaving the board members that the activists want to confess the company's sins so they can broadcast them on the internet. It seems the "cleaner" company has been polluting and exploiting Third World countries, while maintaining a separate corporate image.
Oh, if only there were someone nearby who had not only access to the building's systems, but also the combat knowledge to take these activists down. Thankfully there is, unfortunately she's stuck on a movable scaffold outside the building because her boss made her work late, also she mouthed off to an executive in an elevator, so the boss kind of "stranded" her outside for a bit, and wouldn't you it, the terrorists killed him before he could release his override of the scaffold control. So she can only watch helplessly from outside as the activists subdue the executives and even kill a couple to show they mean business. To make matters worse, her autistic adult brother, who's been kicked out of yet another care home has been put under her supervision, and he's somewhere inside the building with the terrorists, too.
She also JUST found out that one of her co-workers, another window cleaner, is part of the activist group - it's possible that he took the job so he could study the building and learn all the various methods of entry and other holes in the building's security. That tracks but I wonder if I'm helping the screenwriter here by filling in the gaping holes in the plot. It's also a huge drawback that the main action star here is essentially sidelined for a major portion of the film, unable to act or even get back in the building. Imagine if Bruce Willis as John McClane got up into the duct-work of the Nakatomi Tower and got stuck there, and couldn't get out for a large portion of "Die Hard". That's not an action movie, that's an inaction movie.
The news is not all terrible, because Joey manages to stop the scaffold and burn a flaming "SOS" message on the side of the building. She also gets in contact with the London police SWAT team, so they know that she's not a threat and has the skills to help, once she figures out how to break a window and get back inside. Also, her autistic brother happens to be some kind of hacking genius, of course, he got kicked out of care homes for hacking their files, so if she can reach him, he could be able to plug in and prevent the activist's forced confessions from reaching their audience. But still her ex-co-worker becomes the new leader of the group by assassinating the old leader, and he wants to just kill everyone, he's got a dead-man's switch rigged to his own body so even if he gets killed, the building could still blow up real good.
But if anyone's got the skills to fix everything, it's this former army agent turned window cleaner, right? Why, it's almost like some screenwriter thought about a typical day in the life of someone doing this very typical job and tried to imagine all of the things that could possibly go wrong...
Directed by Martin Campbell (director of "Memory" and "The Protégé")
Also starring Daisy Ridley (last seen in "Ophelia"), Matthew Tuck, Clive Owen (last seen in "Killer Elite"), Taz Skylar, Flavia Watson, Ruth Gemmell, Ray Fearon (last seen in "Memory"), Lee Boardman (ditto), Howard Charles, Rufus Jones (last seen in "Wonka"), Richard Hope, Gavin Fleming, Poppy Townsend White, Dudley Watts, Calvin Warrington-Heasman, Andreea Diac (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker"), Russell De Rozario (last seen in "Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), Kate Nichols (also last seen in "Memory"), Stella Stocker (ditto), Sol E. Romero (ditto), Celine Arden, Melissa Humler, Ben Essex, Rebecca Bellavia, Tom Boney, David Cheung, Joshua Ravenscroft, Melanie Grey, Regina Seifert, Akie Kotabe (last seen in "The Son"), Lorna Lowe, Cassandra Spiteri, Simon Uttley, Atanas Srebrev (last seen in "Mechanic: Resurrection"), Einar Haraldsson.
RATING: 5 out of 10 "bird strikes"
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