“Cleaner”, released in 2025, is an action-packed and suspenseful thriller directed by Martin Campbell and starring Daisy Ridley, Taz Skylar and Clive Owen. The film tells the story of a former soldier who was expelled from the army for dishonorable reasons. How to stand up in a hijacking crisis, fight against radicals alone, and save hostages including his brother.
Baixe o Youcine e assista aos últimos filmes. Você pode assistir a várias séries de filmes, incluindo filmes infantis, filmes de suspense, filmes de ação e comédias. O Youcine tem milhões de filmes esperando você baixar.
As a classic “single-person breakout” movie, “Cleaner” inherits the essence of pioneering films such as “Die Hard”, while incorporating modern social issues and high-intensity action scenes. This article will analyze the film from six aspects: plot design, character creation, action scenes, visual presentation, core themes and overall evaluation.
A thrilling plot – how does “Cleaner” reshape the classic?
“Cleaner” adopts the classic “lone hero” narrative mode. The protagonist does not deliberately become a hero, but is forced to make a choice under extreme circumstances. This setting makes the film full of tension in terms of rhythm, while avoiding the “superhero-style” exaggeration.
The story takes place in One Canada Square in Canary Wharf, London. Radical environmentalists hijacked the building at an annual dinner of an energy company and threatened to detonate a bomb to fight against the power of capital. However, some radical members were more extreme than expected, causing the incident to quickly get out of control.
The protagonist Jo (Daisy Ridley) is a former special forces soldier who was expelled from the military due to disciplinary issues and is now an ordinary high-rise cleaner. She was only accidentally involved in the incident, but when she learned that her brother was also one of the hostages, she decided to stand up.
The film maintains a high-intensity rhythm in the advancement of the plot. Without external assistance, Jo used the cleaner’s tools and her own military skills to launch a thrilling breakout battle in the skyscraper.
Compared with similar films, “Cleaner” is relatively rigorous in logic and rationality. The film not only emphasizes action and hot scenes, but also uses a progressive plot design to allow the audience to gradually uncover the terrorists’ motives as the protagonist explores, enhancing the immersion of watching the film.
Daisy Ridley’s breakthrough performance
After the “Star Wars” series, Daisy Ridley gradually tried to transition from science fiction to action films, and “Cleaner” is undoubtedly an important work for her to show her hard-core action style.
Jo, played by her, is not a perfect warrior, but an ordinary person with a traumatized past. Her character neither relies on superpowers nor external support, but survives this life-and-death dilemma with wisdom, adaptability and combat skills.
The film gives Jo a rich emotional level: her guilt for the past, her sense of responsibility to her brother, and her calm decision-making under extreme pressure make her image more three-dimensional.
Ridley showed strong body language and precise emotional interpretation in the film. Especially in the moments of high-rise battles and psychological breakdown, her acting skills are impressive.
So, can Jo become the next female action hero? This is a question worth discussing. She is not portrayed as an “invincible warrior” in the movie, but a flawed but fearless female character, which makes her stand out among many male-dominated action movies.
Innovation of action scenes – realism and excitement coexist
As an action thriller, one of the core highlights of “Cleaner” is undoubtedly its action design. The film abandons overly exaggerated special effects and show-off fighting, and instead adopts close combat, environmental utilization and tactical combat that is closer to reality.
High-altitude escape scenes: As a building cleaner, Jo is familiar with the building structure, which enables her to use ropes, windows and pipes for maneuvering and evasion. The scene where she moves on the steel cable outside the skyscraper is full of tension, similar to the classic scenes of the “Mission Impossible” series.
Fighting with limited resources: Similar to John McClane in “Die Hard”, Jo does not have many weapons and equipment in action and can only use local materials. For example, using cleaning tools as weapons and using ventilation ducts as cover shows a wisdom of “improvisational combat”.
Explosions and gunfights: The film did not go the “over-explosive” route in dealing with gunfights and explosions, but chose a more tactical way of fighting. For example, Jo used obstacles, traps and ambient light to gradually disintegrate the enemy instead of head-on confrontation.
Overall, the action scenes of the film are both compact and exciting, and full of realism, allowing the audience to immerse themselves in it and feel Jo’s pressure to survive.
Sense of oppression in a closed space
The main scene of “Cleaner” is set inside a skyscraper, which makes the visual language of the film full of closure and oppression.
Director Martin Campbell is good at using narrow spaces to create a tense atmosphere, and the audience can feel Jo’s helplessness in the steel jungle. The film’s photography style uses handheld photography and low-light environments to enhance the sense of reality and crisis.
In addition, the film uses cold tones and high contrast in color, making the urban landscape appear colder, while the low-light scenes inside the building enhance the sense of urgency, which is in line with the film’s thriller atmosphere.
Core theme discussion-How are heroes born?
Although “Cleaner” is an action-oriented commercial film, its core still revolves around the theme of “how ordinary people can become heroes in extreme environments”. Jo used to be a soldier, but was expelled from the military for some dishonorable reasons and is now just an unknown cleaner.
However, in the face of terrorist attacks, she had to put aside the shadow of the past and pick up her weapon again. This is not only a challenge for survival, but also a self-redemption.
The film also touches on the moral dilemma of radical environmentalism-the original intention of the protesters was to fight against the power of capital, but some people went to extremes. This binary opposition exploration makes the villain image of the film richer, rather than a simple “terrorist” image.
A modern action thriller worth watching
In general, although “Cleaner” did not subvert the routine of the “single-person breakout” type, it is still a modern action thriller worth watching with its tense plot, excellent action design, oppressive feeling of closed space and the wonderful performance of Daisy Ridley.
Although the film may be a little thin in some aspects (such as the villain creation and some plot logic), its compact rhythm and high-intensity survival challenge can still keep the audience nervous throughout the whole process.
If you like lone hero movies such as “Die Hard” or “Mission Impossible”, “Cleaner” will definitely not disappoint you.