There's a bit of misdirection provided by supporting players Eva Mendes and Luis Guzmán, but their characters get sorted out as the story progresses. As plot points are revealed, it's pretty easy to connect the dots from the murder scene to the killer, and when the finale arrives with Tom's former partner (Ed Harris) about to silence him forever, the fatal shot that stops him comes from Cutler's fourteen year old daughter (Keke Palmer), who spent most of the picture trying to unravel the mystery of her mother's death and why her father left the force. It's all pretty standard stuff for a murder mystery and crime story. Having him present at the scene of the murder was a scheme by outside forces to prevent him from going to authorities, since a corruption investigation could have potentially revealed that he had a past that needed to be kept hidden.
Over the course of the story we learn that Cutler had a shady past as a cop, the insinuation being that he killed a man in a prison yard who was convicted of murdering Tom's wife. He's hired anonymously to personally handle a gruesome splatter job at an upscale residence, and finds himself set up for a crime he didn't commit. Jackson is former cop Tom Cutler, who now owns 'Steri-Clean', a company that performs nasty clean up jobs, up to and including murder scenes. The title pretty much gives away the plot if you're used to crime stories. But the see-through script and the jumbled camera work and direction prevent this from being a significant film.
#CLEANER ONE REVIEWS FULL#
Each of the actors, even the minor roles played very well by such artists as Jose Pablo Cantillo and Robert Forster, give it the full court press. How the story ties together and ends is too loose to convey and would ruin the minimal drama present. Cutler happens on an assignment to clean a particularly gruesome homicide scene in the home of one Ann Northcut (Eva Mendes in a nicely understated role) and as the convoluted story develops, Cutler realizes that the crime scene represents a culmination of forces that threaten to uncork a long history of police corruption - a history that involves him and his best friend Eddie Lorenzo (Ed Harris) and the tough Detective Jim Vargas (a terrific Luis Guzmán). We learn his wife was murdered some years ago, leaving him as a single father of the bright and charming teenager Rose (Keke Palmer). Jackson) is a 'retired' cop who makes his living cleaning up the gory remainders of criminal acts of homicide and other grisly crimes. The saving grace of the film is a cast of stalwart actors who can make even a shaky script palatable.
It is all kind of a mess and justifies the straight to DVD move.
The story line by Matthew Aldrich is further fragmented by being so full of holes that the audience has to toss credibility overboard in order to make it through, and the method of direction by Renny Harlin can't seem to settle on which style to take. CLEANER is somewhat of an enigmatic movie: it starts out as though it is going to be a sassy comedy about a retired cop whose job it is to 'clean up' after homicides (a distinctly messy and repulsive job), turns into a rather grisly crime investigation story, adds a dollop of 'ain't life grand', and finishes as an exposé of police corruption.
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