Clean (2021)
Revenge is a dirty business.
I offered up some genre options, and from there we narrowed it down by titles - and so I finally get around to a movie I’ve had in my rental list for a while. The man, the myth, the dude who owns a castle in my home state - which reminds me I have to track that documentary to watch at some point as well - was the main draw to this one for me. Of course, I also am quite familiar with the movie type as it were - the drama-heavy front end with a man who finally takes enough and things get violent. Considering I have seen nothing to dissuade my interest, let’s hop right on in to the movie about a garbage guy taking out the garbage - Clean.
It’s his name, it’s his job, and it’s his role in the movie that bears it all as it’s title. Clean is about a man with a dark past (that gets told throughout the movie to us in flashbacks and nightmares), trying to become a better him while being surrounded by the filth of the world. He make’s no claims towards being a good man, but his actions during the movie would have us second guess his penchant towards denying the statement - cleaning up and closing up old houses, working his shift as the garbage man, fixing things up and selling them to the local pawn shop all while attending some rehab meetings and keeping an eye on a local girl whose grandma has a habit of not being around. There is a B-side to this story however, following a drug kingpin and his “complicated’ relationship with his son. Things start to pick up when their paths inadvertently cross in a rather unfortunate manner, and the ensuing body count should satisfy any old modern action fan.
The acting to this one is good - largely on account of the good acting allowed by the front-end drama and character building. Think what you will of Brody, but the man has honestly proven he can act in more movies than needed to convince me he can do a good job, and for the plot they are laying out they do need someone who can convincingly lay out emotions - and he does a great job. Even if the role is a bit stereotypical or one-off guard, everybody here puts some good effort into it and you’ll only find a handful of members that don’t seem like they are really doing a great job - and part of that feels less on their shoulders and potentially more on their characters and how they are written in. As I like to point out, I can never really tell just which it is without having that behind-the-scenes knowledge of how things went about.
The characters themselves all have a little something to them, but outside of the main two - that of our cleaner and our kingpin - they don’t all feel as though they have a sense of history about them. On the kingpin’s side, it’s more about the dynamic between him and his son that has the main play - and it isn’t exactly the most unheard of dynamic either. It does work, and it has some pretty good payoffs by the end of the movie in my opinion - but when it comes to feeling like there’s a lot of meat there, our main characters story as his past unfolds as we near the climax is where the more intense chords will play. In ways, you can draw a lot of parallels to other characters of the ilk - the mysterious person whose way more dangerous than anything has let on until their history comes to light - but here there’s just a sense of junkyard ruthless intelligence as opposed to something like the more refined and precision honed theological standpoints of a character like John Wick. Of course, there is something to the simplicity of ‘revenge for dog’ that works for everyone except dog haters - but the bits of nuance to the character here paints a lot of things, good actions included, in an array of greys instead of black and white.
Barbershop for life advice.
The settings and costumes both hit the stride of modern snowy up north. They don’t really stand out, but in turn are doing a great job of being convincing to immersion. The outfits are diverse enough that there’s plenty of ease to pick out who is who in most moments of the movie, including the final action stretch where it can get a little shadowy at times and make folks blend a little more together. Likewise in here I would place the audio selection - the music just isn’t my jam. Works for the scenes it’s in, and some of the beats that go with it are little head bobbers, but the genre has never been my go-to and I have a horrible time having the more orchestral stuff stick around with me after the movies over. That said, it does a good job with helping add to scenes, including one part where the absolutely blaring bass is used as a means to mask violence happening in the background and add a sense of realism to people not noticing things going on around them.
The action scenes when they crop up are some good stuff. Although for the most part you could call most of them more of a small-skirmish, everything before the final act never goes so outlandish with it’s actions that it doesn’t feel believable. Even the final act isn’t unbelievable - but it is a lot more elaborate then the skirmishes that came before it with a much larger body count as well. Where you were pumped and bouncing in your seat for the clean, well oiled efficiency of John Wick, here you’ll be ratcheting between hooting and hollering then wincing at how brutal something was. At one point I even had to make the out-loud question of “Did his arm just come off?” Yeah, solid good job on the action.
And finally, there’s a lot to offer here, as dumb as it might sound, for the folks that like to get heavy into things. I don’t just mean stunt work or the likes, but more so the compositional elements of movies and commentary. There’s a pretty obvious split between this multi-leveled grey take on “good and evil”, complete down to fish versus chicken. On top of that, you get the commentary on the past evils with the PTSD-style nightmare flashbacks, as well as just on society in general with moments talking about the neighborhood slowly decaying into nothing. Some of this stuff is much more bluntly delivered than others - like when the topic of things being filthy come up in the narration - and other times it can be a bit more subtle like with the fish and chicken. Point is, the movie benefits quite nicely from having someone who thought about adding a little more depth to it then just a simple “you are the bad guy, so you must get dead.”
Common plumbing instrument or side character?
I liked this one. Yes, it doesn’t give you the immediate action that a more generic action flick would, but the time spent building the characters - especially the main - up really helps to heighten that final act when it comes around. The action looks good, the acting is done well, and I don’t see a ton of reason for people to dislike it outside of it perhaps not being super duper original and the fact it has violence in it. I mean, I enjoy me a little violence on the screen in the action format - nice and controlled and nobody is really getting hurt - but some people are a bit more squeamish and set in there ways for that - in which case they still might enjoy a good bulk of the movie’s drama elements anyways. Keep up the good work my man, now I just have to track down that darn documentary about your castle.