Cleaner

Nice idea, not so good execution. Samuel L. Jackson is an ex-cop who has started his own “biohazard clean-up” business. That can mean a lot of things, but mostly it’s cleaning up after murders, suicides, and bodies that weren’t found until they were pretty ripe. It’s nasty work, but somebody has to do it, and not many families are up to it. There has already been another movie about this, much more light-hearted, called Sunshine Cleaning. We liked that one quite a bit. This is a lot more gruesome, showing what a crime scene looks like after the body has been removed, taking us step by step through the ugly process of sterilizing it. That part is fascinating. I love learning how things are done.

And it goes along pretty good for about half its length. Jackson gets a call to clean up after a murder. He does, and then finds out that the man is listed as missing, not dead. Somebody hired him to remove all traces of where the murder happened. We soon learn it’s certainly dirty cops, killing someone who was about to blow the whistle on them. From then on he’s in possession of a list of bribe takers, and in danger from the cops. He doesn’t dare go to them because how will he know who’s dirty? Also, his own record as a cop is not pristine; his badge number is in the book. It sounds promising, but it soon loses steam because of extreme predictability. I mean, I knew who did it very early on. How? It was a deeply cynical movie, so I asked myself, what’s the worst it could be? Ask yourself the same question and you’ll know the culprit immediately. Jackson is good, as are Eva Mendes and Ed Harris. But the script sinks it.