Cleaner 2025 is a feminist take on Die Hard

Blender Dumbass
September 08, 2025

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#cleaner #DaisyRidley #MartinCampbell #DieHard #movies #film #review #cinemastodon

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I heard bad things about Martin Campbell's 2025 film Cleaner starring Daisy Ridley. People found this movie dull or whatever. And then I found out that the director was indeed Martin Campbell, the guy who brought us films like Mask of Zorro and a some of the good James Bond films, like Casino Royal ( arguably the best film in the 007 franchise ). The bad things people say and the director's reputation didn't make sense together. I had to see for myself what the fuss is all about.

Let me tell you that: the film is really fucking good. I mean it is Campbell, he knows how to do a movie. But it is also not as good as Casino Royal or Die Hard, which this movie is trying to be an imitation of.

The story is pretty much the same as in Die Hard. There is a party of important rich motherfuckers in a huge building. And there is a group of terrorists who break in, take control and not realize that there is a trained person who knows how to use a gun stuck with them in the building. In this movie though it is not Bruce Willis but instead Daisy Ridley. And instead of her being a cop from another town, she is an ex-military cleaning lady who works in this very building. Well she is the kind of outside window cleaner lady. Not the regular kind. The one that needs to hand on to her dear life at a huge height to do her job kind. Which makes her so much fucking cooler.

The writing from 3 people Simon Uttley, Paul Andrew Williams and Matthew Orton is weird. It almost seems like an amateurish type of script. Like the beginning of the movie is the beginning of every bad student film where the writer doesn't fucking know what the fuck he is doing. Daisy wakes up, brushes her teeth and goes to work. Are you kidding me?

Well what I think happened is this. Campbell saw the script and saw the good parts in the script, like the nuanced politics of it. And then he probably recognized the bullshit parts, like the waking up and brushing teeth sequence and decided instead of cutting it out, he would try to flex his directing muscle and try to make it actually work.

And he did!

This scene where she wakes up, brushes her teeth and goes to work is a fucking banger! There is so much energy. So much urgency. So much comedy in her frantic running around the house and trying to get ready as fast as possible, broken routine, that the scene is actually sort of kind of genius. What?

I love Daisy Ridley. She is so cute that I would buy any bullshit writing just to keep looking at her face. I don't care if it's J. J. Abrams making her a super-hero kid Palpatine. Or if it is Campbell making her a replacement for John McClane. Just give me more of her face. The problem with this film in particular is that Campbell somehow avoided giving me the "short orgasmic blackout" moment. ( I've talked about it many times in my reviews, but seeing a cute female face be very fucking tough and angry glitches my brain into over-producing dopamine ). Somehow with all the good opportunities, this film never had a moment when Ridley is fucking angry at somebody. Yeah, she kills people in the film. But she is kind of calm doing so. And most of the film she is serious, but not angry or anything like that. She is just tactical. Like a good soldier.

I wish there was something more personal for her to fight for. Not just the fact that she is a capable fighter that happens to be in a terrorist-infiltrated building. If say her brother died from the hands of the bad guys ( I know it's way too brutal for this kind of movie ), but let's say it did happened. Suddenly there would have been a real emotional drive for her to fuck up the bad guys. And then we would get an angry cute face Daisy Ridley shooting bad guys till nothing is left of them, which would have glitched my brain. And that would have been awesome. But I guess, the script is going for a much safer rating or something. And that is probably why people think that the movie is kind of dull.

Speaking of politics. I very liked how the script approaches the subject matter. In a way Ridley's character is on the same political side as the terrorists. They agree on basic things. They disagree on means to achieve those things. There is a middle ground Clive Owen character that stands somewhere in between the two when it comes to means. And there is the extremist type Taz Skyler psychopath character, that arrived to a logical conclusion that all humans should die because otherwise there is no way to fix anything anymore ( politically speaking ) about this world. And so if Ridley could have joined Owen's character ( maybe ). She really fights against Skyler's character. Even though on the surface level she might actually agree with him in certain ways.

I think the way this movie handles politics is the reason Campbell got involved in the project. It feels right for this director to do this kind of nuanced exploration type movie. He did something quite similar with Casino Royal and later in 2017 with Jackie Chan in The Foreigner. And then his ego struck him, that he might try to direct the shit out of the dull parts, in hopes to make them good. He succeeded with the beginning, but not so successes with other scenes. Even though, even they were good attempts, worthy of praise.

Happy Hacking!!!