Cleaner

Name: Cleaner
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Crime
Released: May 27, 2008
Duration: 88 min
Rating: 49
Cast: Ed Harris, Eva Mendes, Luis Guzmán, Samuel L. Jackson

2008

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Mixed or average reviews based on 4 Critic Reviews

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Cleaner

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Movie Details & Credits

Screen Gems | Release Date: May 27, 2008 | R

Starring: Ed Harris, Eva Mendes, Luis Guzmán, Samuel L. Jackson

Summary: A former cop who now earns a wage as a crime scene cleaner unknowingly participates in a cover-up at his latest job.

Director: Renny Harlin

Genre(s): Mystery, Thriller, Crime

Rating: R

Runtime: 88 min

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Critic Reviews

Michael Rechtshaffen

A neatly contained crime whodunit with a nifty setup and an expert lead performance from Samuel L. Jackson. Read full review

James Musgrove

Cleaner needed serious editing and instead, seems intent on being long and drawn out to prove some sort of point. Read full review

Nathan Rabin

Don't let the film's highbrow cast, portentous tone, and leisurely pace fool you: Cleaner is just as empty and formulaic as his previous films, just much, much duller. Read full review

Eddie Cockrell

Scrub away a needlessly fussy visual style, trendy narrative tweaks and a climax both morally repugnant and logically absurd, and there’s a tough little noir about buried transgressions coming out of the past in Renny Harlin’s lackluster thriller “Cleaner.” Too mainstream to attract genre interest, and too tangled in its character motivations to sit well with the multiplex crowd, this is a minor stain that should fade quickly and leave only faint traces in ancillary. Read full review

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DawdlingPoet

Nov 28, 2021

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Being that Samuel L Jackson appears in this movie, I thought it was worth checking out, though the first thing I thought when I heard what the story was about, was that it probably wouldn't be better than Sunshine Cleaning - another movie about people who clean crime scenes for a living but then this is a different movie really, clearly lacking in comedy being more crime drama based. Having said that, I wouldn't say that there's no sentimentality present, there is, most noteably between Samuels character, the main character, a man called Tom Cutler and his daughter, Rose Cutler, played by Keke Palmer. Here there is a level of predictable cheese present, I'm afraid to say, consisting mainly of scenes when the quiet, brooding Tom staggers home clearly worried or worse for wear ignoring calls from Rose to let her into his world and share whats going on and yes there is even a scene with her tending to his somewhat 'wounded fawn' of a father, followed by one or two more scenes of over the top sentimentality - touching stuff perhaps but the words predictable and cheese do still very much come to mind.

The other main character as far as the plot is concerned I'd say is Ann Norcut, the wife mentioned in the story section above, who's played by Eva Mendes. The two actors are quite well matched, both giving quite strong performances (although obviously their tied down by the script but otherwise thats so), with Samuel portraying the crime scene cleaner 'in over his head', trying to do Ann right by getting to the bottom of things while keeping his daughter safe and Eva playing the very strong willed Ann, who wouldn't leave Tom alone until she knew what he knew - yes this is all hardly new ground when it comes to crime drama movies, as you can probably tell. There are a couple of other characters, including Detective Jim Vargas (played by Luis Guzman) and Eddie Lorenzo (played by Ed Harris), though there's not much particularly worth mentioning about these characters, if I went into details then I'd be giving away the story.

I felt that the movie was alright, it was watchable and the story was actually quite intriguing and certainly the cast helped it be better than a very forgettable movie, yet for the bigger stars I wouldn't say that its the best movie they've starred in. I think that ultimately, the cast and the story that develops overall (ignoring the cheesy sub plots along the way) makes this movie watchable.

I should also probably mention that, as the story should indicate, there are some rather bloody crim scenes featured in the movie, so its perhaps not for the very faint hearted. There is some violence present too, although its not overly strong - the movie is rated 15 and I feel this is about right, due to the bloody crime scenes shown, some moderate violence and strong language.

Overall, no I don't think that I would particularly recommend it, although if this is your type of movie and you're keen on the cast, then you may well enjoy it so catching it if its shown on TV again it might be worth watching but I wouldn't really go out of my way to watch it otherwise and I don't think its worth paying much money for to buy on DVD as such. Its just not all that original, I guess I let the cheesy/unoriginal aspects annoy me a bit much, its difficult to decide exactly how I felt about it because I thought the ending was quite good story wise, so thats something. Its one of those movies that could be worse but could be better too, its sadly let down by some predictable scenes and elements yet I feel the story had more potential somehow but the cast do try and do their best to make the most of it, if that makes sense.… Expand

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