Since I watch a lot of movies, I’m usually familiar with most Hollywood titles even if I haven’t seen them yet. That’s why I was surprised to come across the 2007 film Cleaner at the video store last weekend. I’d never heard of it at all, which was strange considering the fact that it stars well-known actors like Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, and Eva Mendes. How could I have missed this?
A quick check of IMDb.com told me that Cleaner went straight-to-DVD in the U.S., and only had limited releases in a handful of countries such as Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Russia. That history obviously didn’t give me much confidence about the quality of the film, but since I already paid for the rental I figured I might as well watch it. And now, I completely understand its box office fate.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Tom Cutler (played by Jackson) is a retired cop who now makes a living running a cleaning company. This isn’t the kind that sends maids to clean and dust upscale suburban homes, however. It’s a company that specializes in removing biological waste, specifically, the blood, tissue, and other debris left behind at crime scenes or in homes when people die natural deaths. It’s grisly work for sure, but Tom doesn’t mind it.
One day, he gets a call to go out to the Norcut home to clean up a murder scene. The order came in through regular police channels, and Tom treats the job very carefully, taking a lot of photos and documenting his actions. He gets everything done and clears out of there before the grieving widow returns.
The next day, Tom goes back to the house to get Mrs. Norcut’s (Eva Mendes) signature on some forms. The only problem is, Mrs. Norcut has no idea what Tom is talking about. She didn’t order the cleaning service, and no one died in her house. Yes, it’s true that her husband is missing, but he’s holding out hope that he will eventually surface.
Tom makes some phone calls and finds out that Mrs. Norcut’s husband was set to testify in a major corruption case against the police department. He had evidence documenting payoffs and other illegal activity, and could bring down nearly everyone in the department, including the chief. Tom then puts two and two together to realize that Norcut was murdered to eliminate his testimony, and the crime was cleverly covered up by having Tom clean the scene.
Mrs. Norcut begs Tom to help her find out what really happened to her husband, so the rest of the film deals with their unofficial investigation into the murder. There is one “twist” along the way, but since the audience can see it coming almost from the beginning, it wasn’t a real surprise at all.
My Reaction: I thought Cleaner had a very interesting premise and started out extremely well. I liked the idea that a killer would use this type of cleaning service to get rid of all evidence of his crime, because for as many police procedural shows that I watch, I’ve never seen that setup before. That type of originality is hard to come by these days.
Unfortunately, the film soon slipped into the predictable pattern that most of these police whodunnits follow. The blustery cop who comes off as a real jackass doesn’t have anything to hide and is actually just doing his job. The good friend can’t be trusted. And everybody’s playing an angle.
As I mentioned above, the twist involving the Harris character wasn’t all that surprising. The only hard part was figuring out his connection to Mrs. Norcut — which was conveniently shown to viewers via a volunteer plaque. Nice storytelling there…. not!
Watching the mystery slowly unravel was very dull, as nothing much happens in Act II. Plus, there were a lot of unnecessary scenes involving Tom’s daughter and home life, which added nothing to the main plot, very little to characterization, and served only to add minutes to an already anemic film.
Overall, it’s not surprising that Cleaner went straight to DVD here. The big names do what they can with the material, but in the end it simply wasn’t enough to make this film worth watching. Chalk this one up as another bomb from director Renny Harlin. I give it 3.5 stars out of 10.