STUDIO: Sony
RELEASE DATE: May 27, 2008
STARRING: Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, Eva Mendes, Luis Guzman, Keke Palmer, and Robert Forster
WRITTEN BY: Matthew Aldrich
DIRECTED BY: Renny Harlin
FEATURES: Deleted Scenes
Commentary with Director Renny Harlin
Bonus Digital Copy of the Film

Cutthroat Island must have made people even angrier than I remember. Renny Harlin was once one of the biggest directors in Hollywood, riding a wave of hits like Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger. But Cutthroat Island and the underrated Long Kiss Goodnight and Deep Blue Sea all underperformed and the '00s have been a dark, dark time for Harlin. Driven was one of Stallone's last pre-Rambo/Rocky comeback debacles and Mindhunters and The Covenant were barely released in theaters (and really never should have been). He's currently filming a John Cena movie that screams straight-to-video. If he had one last shot at theatrical glory, one would assume that it would have been a reunion with Goodnight and Blue Sea star Samuel L. Jackson in the thriller Cleaner. Add the uber-sexy Eva Mendes and the always-great Ed Harris and it will make video stores shoppers do a double-take, wondering how they missed this cast in theaters. They didn't. Like a lot of Harlin's recent work, Cleaner never felt the air-conditioned atmosphere of the multiplex and even with great actors like Jackson, Mendes, Harris, Luis Guzman, Akeelah and the Bee's Keke Palmer, and a Jackie Brown reunion with Robert Forster, it's pretty easy to see why. Cleaner is a mess with a clever concept that becomes almost instantly predictable. It's a paint-by-numbers thriller with some talented painters that can't bring to life what isn't there.

Admittedly, the set-up for Cleaner is pretty clever. Jackson plays a former cop who now handles the clean-up duties when people die. What you may not know is that the city takes away the body, but every fluid that a human corpse leaves behind is your responsibility. It's not pretty. That's where our hero steps in. One day he gets a call from a "Detective Jones" to clean up a crime scene at a fancy mansion. Of course, he's being used. It turns out that it's not actually a crime scene but a murder scene and our poor protagonist is not only wiping away all the evidence but leaving some behind that he was there. And he actually has a motive to wipe out this poor victim. Ed Harris plays his former partner, the gorgeous Eva Mendes plays the wife of the deceased and Keke Palmer plays Jackson's daughter. Great character actors Luis Guzman and Robert Forster show up as colorful supporting characters.

Cleaner starts strong and Jackson and Harris are always good, but anyone who's ever seen a thriller can map out the entire movie from the set-up. It's far too obvious for modern audiences, which puts all the weight of entertainment on the cast and director. But even actors this talented can't do anything with a script that barely gives them even two dimensions. Harlin could have pared down the thriller aspects and tried to make these characters believable, but his style makes them feel even more like plot devices because he's always been a director so interested in style over anything else. Nothing that happens in Cleaner feels real. It's all too, well, clean. The DVD being clean in its video and audio presentation is a welcome sight, but this is a major Sony title, so that's to be expected. Fans of Cleaner will find some interesting deleted scenes (some of which would have added some breadth to the paper-thin movie) and a commentary with Harlin. In a welcome new trend, you also get a digital copy of Cleaner to watch on your iPod. Don't expect to keep it on there for too long.