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The movie begins with Jake (Cedric) waking up in a hotel and finding himself in bed with a dead
FBI agent.
He can't remember who he is or how he got there and decides to flee the scene taking with him a suitcase full of money. He is met by a sultry Diane (Nicolette Sheridan) who claims she is his wife and takes him to a fancy mansion. His rich man lifestyle is cut short when he overhears Diane and some men plotting to kill him for a computer chip. He runs away again and meets a feisty waitress named Gina (Lucy Lui) who tells him he is a janitor. Still with an identity crisis, he takes a third option to reconstruct his past owing to a hodgepodge of flashbacks that make him part of an elite military unit or an undercover spy. It is up to Gina to jolt him out of his illusions of grandeur and help him escape the people who want to kill him including video game company president Eric Hauck (Mark Dacascos) and FBI agent Shaw (Callum Keith Rennie).
The greatest mistake of the creators of The Cleaners
is the failure to realize that there is a basic need to blend disparate elements together and make a logical plot structure instead of simply splicing together scenes from past movies. The character motivations are illogical and the development is incoherent. As a comedy, the script is almost never funny except in small stretches where Cedric rambles nervously. When it tries to devolve into an action flick, it flops even more miserably with outdated and unimaginative chase scenes and gun fights. The directorial and scripting failure cannot be resuscitated by the decent technicalities of the film. Altogether, the movie is downright corny and a strain to sit through its entire length.
What makes a man worthy is not his stature or profession but his integrity and humanity. A
simple janitor is more admirable than a successful yet selfish company president or brave but corrupt officer if he cares more about the welfare of others and is willing to go
through great lengths to do what is right. In a society that places greater weight on the material and quantitative feats, it is good to be reminded that what matters at the end
of the day is a simple good deed done for the betterment of someone else.
This moral is subtle but can be picked up in the film however, in the feeble attempt to elicit a few cheap laughs; the creators of the film have the protagonist resorting to tasteless sexual jokes that are out of context and offensive. Although the movie is acceptable even for teenagers, it is recommended that the time and money be spent elsewhere for a worthwhile entertainment.
(Date Reviewed: 9 February 2007)
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