Martin Campbell’s Cleaner, starring Daisy Ridley, as the name suggests, is centered around a window cleaner, Joey Locke, and how she single-handedly managed to take on a radical group to bring home her older brother from an armed siege at One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, in London. It was just another day at work for Joey, and she was running late as usual. To make matters all the more challenging, she received a call from her brother’s care home. It was Michael’s ninth placement, and once again the authorities found him ineligible to stay. They believed he’d stolen confidential care home account information and leaked it to the local press to establish how the funds were being used wrongfully. Joey vouched for her brother, but the administration refused to budge. They encouraged Joey to look after her brother all by herself. Michael was happy with the suggestion, but Joey was not entirely sure about the arrangement. Michael accompanied her to work; he was autistic and found the busy work environment a little challenging, but Joey assumed he would manage.
Spoiler Alert
Who was the radical group?
The building belonged to Agnian Energy, and we soon learned that the owners, Geoffrey and Gerald Milton, were pretty much liars and manipulators. They had organized a celebratory gala for their shareholders since their company was doing very well even during a time of crisis. They also spoke about being an ethical, sustainable, and responsible energy provider, but it was all a farce. While they managed to fool half of the world, the environmental activists saw through their act. The group, Earth Revolution, managed to trespass the building security dressed as performers. They shot down the operators in the control room and replaced them. They sprayed an anesthetic gas, and the guests immediately started to collapse on the floor. The activists used smelling salts to force the main culprits to regain consciousness. Their hacker, Zee, managed to break into the company’s system, and they played a video for the shareholders at the party that highlighted the malpractices Agnian Energy was involved in. It was obvious that everything they proudly stated in their official video was just a bunch of lies, and in reality, they were destroying the environment every second.
The leader of the group, Marcus, showed the shareholders the condition of Laguna Taracoa, the place where Agnian had been dumping millions of gallons of wastewater which resulted in the complete destruction of the ecosystem there. They’d also murdered activist Elena Lanza after she was arrested so that she never got the chance to expose Agnian in court. The radical activists planned on exposing the dirty secrets of the influential shareholders and forcing them to confess their involvement with Agnian Energy to the world, and holding them hostage was the only way they could execute their plan. When Geoffrey protested, Noah (one of the cleaners and activists) killed him. Marcus was not happy with the way Noah reacted, but there was no stopping the young man.
Why did Noah kill Marcus?
Unlike Marcus, who believed in radical actions but not in killing his enemies, Noah had no limits. Marcus wanted to expose the corrupt businessmen and was hopeful that it would result in some tangible change, but Noah didn’t trust the world anymore. He claimed to be an anti-humanist and he strongly believed that humans deserved to be completely wiped off the face of the planet because people were the problem that the world needed to be cured of. Noah previously went by the name Lucas Vander and was a member of an anti-humanist group, Seventh Harvest.
Marcus warned Noah and established that he was the one in charge, and that Noah must not disrupt his plan. Things got complicated when Gerald attempted to run out of the building, and they also realized that one of the cleaners, Joey, was still hanging outside the building, and she had made an SOS call. Noah was asked to bring the situation under control. He had his gun pointed at Gerald, and Marcus warned him that they needed at least one of the brothers alive to negotiate with the authorities. Noah refused to listen to Marcus, and the leader soon figured out that there were those in his group who preferred Noah over him. Noah believed that Marcus did not have what it would take to actually bring about a change, and without any hesitation, he shot Marcus. Noah asked his true believers to kill those who did not agree with his vision, and soon many of the activists in the group were shot.
How did Joey try to save the day?
With the police on the way, Noah had to come up with a plan to keep them away while his team recorded all the confessions. Noah threatened to find and kill Joey’s brother if she failed to do what she was told. Noah knew about Michael, and he was also aware of how deeply Joey cared about him. He was confident that she would listen to him, and he was right. Joey fired a couple of blank shots to make the feds think that she was the terrorist. Noah asked his hacker to transfer 33 million pounds from the Milton brothers’ funds to Joey’s account to make the feds think that there was a connection.
DS Claire Hume and DI Kahn were responsible for dealing with the hostage situation, and they soon discovered that the cleaner, Joanna (Joey), was ex-army, with the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, who had made it to marine selection but was involved in an incident where she assaulted her squad member, and she ultimately had to quit. Her troubled childhood involving her abusive father had affected her mental health, and she had a history with drugs and self-medication. Hume refused to believe that Joey was their target. Considering her background, she could’ve killed people if she had intended to, and Hume was proved right when Joey contacted her and explained that she was not involved in the hostage situation, and she begged them to save her brother. When the SWAT team failed to enter the building, Joey offered to help. Hume supported Joey’s plan, and she sent explosives her way to make Noah think that Joey had died.
And in the meantime, Hume’s snipers made holes in the window, and Joey tried her best to break it down. Michael came to her rescue. He’d been keeping a close watch on Joey, and he helped break the window. Joey was finally inside the building, and she had to act fast. Joey instructed Michael to hack into the computer and get the files that Noah was after while she handled his loyal supporters. Zee was not completely on board with Noah’s idea, but she had no choice but to put up with it. She lost all hope when she realized that Noah’s ultimate plan was to encourage his viewers to kill themselves and ultimately terminate the human race to save Earth; she realized that she was dealing with a complete psycho. She tried to make a run for it, but she was shot by his supporter. Joey managed to shoot down one of Noah’s guards, and made it to the operations room with Michael.
Michael innocently stated that he agreed with Noah’s worldview, but his plan of eliminating the human race was too extreme. Before the videos made it to the news and social media, Michael had to hack the system and destroy them. Joey informed Noah that there was no way she would allow his plan to work. She wanted the world to remember him as a psycho killer, and not a man on a mission.
During Cleaner’s ending, Joey asked Hume to instruct her men to enter the building and help as many hostages as they could while she distracted Noah with the data she had gathered. Joey encouraged Michael to leave with the rescue team, but Michael refused to do so without his sister. Joey believed she had failed her brother by not being there for him most of his life, but this time she wanted to make sure that she did the right thing. While Michael left, Joey finally confronted Noah. The two got into a physical fight; Noah wanted the hard drive with the videos, but Joey explained it was all gone. Noah had bobby trapped the hostages with explosives, and the minute he would be killed, the detonator to the explosives would be activated. So, either way, his plan would be somewhat of a success. But Joey was ex-military; she knew how to tackle her enemies. In the end, when Noah was holding on to a rope with his dear life, Joey showed up and said she had taken the detonator from him. Joey pushed Noah off the building, and he succumbed to the fall. The victims were rescued, and Joey finally met Hume. She asked Joey for the hard drive, but she lied about not having any data. She stated that she’d bluffed and Noah had bought her story. Even though Hume could sense that Joey was not being completely honest, she chose to let it go.
Did Michael And Joey Leak The Files?
Cleaner’s ending revealed that an anonymous account had posted what came to be known as the “Earth Revolution Leaks.” The confession videos exposed the corruption that was at play, and the world finally got to know how the leaders and people with influence were filling their pockets while entirely ignoring the harm caused by companies such as Agnian Energy. The news had spread far and wide, and the whole world started to talk about the corruption in the energy industry. It was obvious that Michael and Joey had uploaded the videos. Michael had always wanted to do good for the world, and exposing the deception at play was an obvious step for them. Whether or not actions would be taken to address the climate crisis is something that neither Michael nor Joey knew, but they did what they thought was the right thing to do.
