Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
1/15/07
Ah, January: when a lot of
Oscar contenders are still snaking their way through the Nation's movie
chains... along with a fair number of titles that sounded good, for some
reason just didn't work, and now sneak into theaters in heavily edited
80-odd minutes versions. Code Name: The Cleaner is not
an Oscar contender.
Jake Rodgers (Cedric the
Entertainer) awakens in a hotel room bed with no memory, a suitcase full
of money, and a dead FBI agent. Soon enough he's been whisked away
to a luxurious mansion by Diane (Nicolette Sheridan), who claims to be
his wife. But she's clearly up to no good and so he escapes and is
soon on the run with waitress Gina (Lucy Liu) who claims to be his girlfriend.
Memory flashes of himself and a black ops team have Jake convinced of one
thing: he's some kind of government agent. Except that Gina
insists he's really a janitor.
Code Name: The Cleaner
starts with a plot (the man with amnesia who must sort through myriad stories
people are telling him about who he is) that's worked countless times in
the past. It mixes in appealing stars in the funny Cedric, the delightful
Liu, underemployed villain Mark Dacascos and reliable character actor Will
Patton. And to this mix, writers Robert Adetuyi and George Gallo
and director Les Mayfield (who's come to specialize in this sort of underbaked
high-concept action comedy) add pretty much nothing. Without particularly
funny jokes or exciting action (despite the martial arts skills of Liu
and Dacascos, who mix it up all too briefly late in the game), The Cleaner
must coast on its' stars appeal and a mildly diverting plot. It does
so, and what's on the screen is by no means painful, but it's also uninspired
and instantly forgettable.
Not that I was itching for
more running time, but the 84-minute movie is filled with signs that it's
been edited to the bone. End credits outtakes demonstrate that the
dialog was heavily improvised, which might explain why the characters often
seem to be responding to what other characters were supposed to say rather
than what they actually did.
Cedric can be hilarious in
the right role, but he hasn't really shown the acting chops for this sort
of comic action lead. He's likeable and fun, but I don't know that
I ever really thought of Jake as a real character rather than Cedric himself
(of course, Bob Hope built any entire career on that sort of thing).
With little else to pass the time, I did think a lot about the careers
of both Dacascos and Liu. He's got a ton of screen presence and is
a genuinely impressive movie martial artist, but has never really been
able to break out of direct-to-video movies and his job as The Chairman
on the American version of Iron Chef. That's a shame.
And Liu's failure to become a top star is a mystery to me. I don't
know if there's a woman in movies today is can be more infectiously fun.
How she never winds up in romantic comedies, I have no idea.
Other than that, there's
really not a lot to say about Code Name: The Cleaner.
I'm sure it sounded like a good idea to everyone involved at some point.
And the end result is just entertaining enough that I'm not angry to have
seen it. If that sounds like faint praise, well, that's what I was
shooting for. |
