Clean: Another "guy with a past action drama movie" but way too slow

There are a lot of movies that have this same premise. I think the one that stands out the most is the John Wick films and even though we all kind of know what is going to happen in all of those films, they still remain entertaining because of the well-coordinated fight scenes and absurd levels of connections that Wick himself seems to have.

Adrian Brody must have wanted to try to be a part of this phenomenon when he co-wrote, produced, starred in, and even wrote the music to the 2021 film Clean.

Before we even get into the problems that exist in the writing and execution of this film we need to start with a couple of underlying problems that were going to happen before they even had the first day of shooting. Brody definitely IS an accomplished actor, he has won a very well-deserved Academy Award for his incredibly role in The Pianist. There have been a number of other noteworthy roles that he has played but there is one things I definitely would never consider this rather scrawny person to ever be: A dangerous man who is capable of dispatching multiple in a fight.

While it is not clear at the start of this film that this is where the movie is going, this is exactly where it ends up. If you read the description of the film or watch the trailer this is quite evident so no, this is not a spoiler.

With most "guy with a past" films this movie follows the usual patterns of that said guy doesn't really want to be violent, is doing everything he can to not be violent, but due to the actions of others that are beyond his control he gets roped into precisely that.

src

The brooding and never-changing facial expression is very reminiscent of The Pianist and it kind of makes me wonder if Brody is capable of having any other sort of expression on his face. He is very monotone and only shows some level of emotion towards a select number of people in all of his interactions but even then he is attempting to come across as a very troubled individual.

The dude barely sleeps, and he carries on with his day in a very routine way and his name is unironically "Clean" to the other people that he speaks to and I guess this is a reference to a couple of things: One, he is a sanitation worker / garbage collector who works at night and "cleans" things and two, he is a recovering heroin addict.

It is kind of stupid how his inner demons are awoken when he hallucinates something going on in a house that he is refurbishing, follows said spectre and just happens to discover a toolbox with his weapon of choice, a giant wrench.

Though he minds his own business and is a "good man" he is pushed over the edge by some gang-bangers in the neighborhood who are attempting to corrupt a young girl that he knows and kind of looks after who reminds him of his now dead daughter.

This leads to him accidentally getting wrapped up with the mob who now want him dead. Does this sound at all familiar? It is basically the plot of every "guy with a violent past" movie that has ever been made.

src

The major difference is that this film, although shot very well, is exceptionally slow moving. I always suspect this of any film that is almost exactly 90 minutes long because since this is the expected length of a film I feel as though when the final cut hits almost exactly that mark that there is going to be a lot of filler in the movie and this film has plenty of that.

Almost nothing of substance happens until about 40 minutes into the movie and even once the major players in the film are revealed they spend very little time on character development and it is just a train-wreck of everything happening at once. The last 15 minutes of the film are relatively entertaining but unfortunately we have to sit through over an hour of boredom in order to get there. Time after time we are shown flashbacks into "Clean's" past to the point where it starts to feel like "ok, we get it... dude feels bad about his heroin addled past, let's move on already!"

src

While the last part of the film is entertaining there is also the problem with the inclusion of Glenn Fleshler as racist mob-boss "Michael." For starters, what kind of a mob boss is named "Michael?" Also, Fleshler's acting is so bad that it simply takes away from any scene that he is in.

src
_{this was probably the same reaction he had when they called and offered him the part}

Certainly they could have found someone better for this typical Italian guy mob boss role. He is so much of an unknown actor that his wiki page doesn't even have his picture and there are no stock photos of him being in the film at all. I had to capture the above one from the trailer where an absurd interaction happens between him and clean where he says "who is this? How'd you get this number?" to which Clean responds "same way I got your address." urgh.

Should I watch it?

I don't think you need to. While I applaud Brody for being so hands-on as far as basically handling EVERYTHING that is involved in this film, he simply isn't the right guy for the job. Funding a project on your own isn't going to change this. Brody is simply not a believable tough guy and the poorly-written screenplay doesn't do much to help this notion.

If you do decide to watch this, be sure to keep the remote in your hand because trust me when I say that you will get exceptionally bored during all the rather useless scenarios and dialogue that happens in the first hour or so.