Spoiler Warning: There are some major spoilers for Cleaner below. If you’ve yet to watch the action thriller, please come back after checking it out.
I don’t know how it happened, but I completely missed Cleaner when it first dropped on the 2025 movie schedule. Being a fan of new action movies and all, and considering director Martin Campbell gave the world two of my favorite James Bond movies (Goldeneye and Casino Royale), you would think I would have jumped at the first opportunity. But I didn’t catch the Daisy Ridley movie about a group of eco-terrorists taking over a London skyscraper until it became available with a HBO Max subscription.
Though I have some problems with the movie and don’t think it’s the best cinematic achievement of the year, there’s a scene in Cleaner that legitimately shocked me, and I have to talk about it. That said, let me break it all down.
Again, major spoilers ahead…
Killing The Main Villain (And An Actor All Over The Poster) Less Than An Hour In Is A Wild Choice
Now that all the spoiler business is out of the way, let’s get into that shocking scene that got me so worked up. Barely 40 minutes into the movie, and around 15 minutes after he’s first introduced as the leader of the environmental group known as Earth Revolution, Marcus Blake (Clive Owen) is shot and killed by Noah Santos (Taz Skylar), one of his fellow terrorists.
I don’t want to call this a bait and switch, but Clive Owen’s face was all over the marketing (the title page on HBO Max features him and Daisy Ridley) and killing off like that in such a sudden and abrupt manner was a wild choice. I honestly thought this was going to be like Inside Man where Owen’s villain steals the show, but instead he’s taken out by one of his own just when we’re getting to know him.
I Honestly Had To Go Back And Make Sure This Actually Happened
I’m not going to lie, I had to go back and rewatch the scene where Marcus Blake is gunned down in Cleaner. At first, I thought it was someone else on the receiving end of the shot, because how could you kill your main villain before the halfway point of Act 2? It just doesn’t make sense, right?
Well, once the dust had settled and I figured out what was going on, I ended up enjoying the choice, as it made Noah look like a monstrous bad guy who would do anything and everything to carry out his mission. Combine that with him turning on Daisy Ridley’s Joanna Locke, and you have yourself a great villain. But still, miss you, Clive.
I Wasn’t The Biggest Fan Of This Movie, But This Twist Was Pretty Cool
I wouldn’t put Cleaner on the list of Clive Owen’s best movies, but I also can’t act like the twist wasn’t pretty cool either. The movie, which had some heart-stopping action sequences, most of which involved Daisy Ridley’s badass female hero, felt a little formulaic at times and had some pacing issues despite its hour-and-a-half runtime. However, it was the fun and genuinely shocking twist that pushed it up a few notches. After that, I thought anything could happen.
All in all, Cleaner is a middle-of-the-road movie, but that twist is just too good to pass up.