The action thriller Cleaner sees Daisy Ridley as a former elite soldier who is now working as a high-rise window cleaner following a dishonourable discharge. While scrubbing away one day, she comes across a hostage situation. She uses her skills and position to intervene. We caught up with director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) about making the film and much more…
STARBURST: So many people, as soon as they see the trailer might immediately think Die Hard, or any of these other action movies that are of a similar ilk. What attracted you to the script for Cleaner initially, and what do you think makes it stand out?
Martin Campbell: When I read the script, it was a page turner, number one. Secondly, it’s very different to Die Hard. Of course we’re going to get compared to that because it’s a lone window cleaner on the side of a skyscraper. It happened that Bruce Willis was inside the building as opposed to outside. But really that’s where the story differs completely, obviously. A group of so-called terrorists are eco-warriors and the interesting thing for me, apart from Daisy, who it was great to have a woman protagonist, basically, and she’s just a window cleaner. That’s all she is. And the bad guys with Clive Owen playing the Marcus character, and of course Taz Skylar playing Noah… what Clive Owen is doing is, of course, totally legitimate. Yes, he’s making a big statement by taking all these hostages and so forth, but he’s anti-violent. Yes, threatening. Of course, he is. He wants to make a big statement, he’s a veteran activist and the company are sleazebags. This is an energy company that’s broken just about every rule in the book in order to up the shareholder price and so forth. So I think what he is doing is absolutely correct, and I think honourable, albeit that yes, he’s breaking the law and so forth by taking them hostages but nevertheless, what he believes is you have to make a big statement in order to change anything. What makes it interesting is of course there’s another faction within his own group of people who literally pull a coup d’etat. In other words, we then have Noah who believes we’re not going nearly far enough. And, in fact, he is what’s known as, is really an anti-humanist group who simply believe the planet is being destroyed by human beings, which is, by the way, probably a true sentiment. But he believes the only way to solve the problem is to wipe out all human beings and then the planet will repair itself. It’s psychotic in a sense, obviously. But he believes that it’s not enough to block up motorways, throw paint on pictures, throw rotten eggs at public figures and so forth. It gets you nowhere, and what he believes is you need something really huge for it to have an impact with the press in order to change anything. So that part is very interesting.
A lot of what you’re talking about that sets Cleaner apart is its villain, right? As a director who’s worked with these big stars, you’ve worked with Daniel Craig and you’ve worked with Ryan Reynolds and Antonio Banderas, how does working with Daisy Ridley and, of course, Taz Skylar and the rest of the cast compare?
Well, obviously Daisy, I love working with her. She’s very good. She worked very hard. She’s very good in the film, and Taz is new to most people. That’s what was exciting about him. I think most people have probably not seen. I think he was on a successful TV series [One Piece] and still is on that series, but I think he’s a new face and he did a great job. So those two were fantastic and Clive Owen I’ve directed before, so it’s like old friends meeting and so forth. And he’s a funny guy, actually. He’s a very funny guy. We have a lot of laughs together when we work together.
You mentioned that you work with a couple of these people over and over again. Do you really think that is something that makes a Martin Campbell film? Do you think that you really put your own fingerprint on the project or do you let the project dictate its own terms?
Well, he always, as a director, any director puts his fingerprint for better or for worse on any project. And I often think that the director’s personality comes out on the screen. So in so far as I directed it, I guess I didn’t put my stamp on it, if you see what I mean. But obviously, you follow the script. You’ve had a whole process of working on the script with the writer, and then when you direct it, you just give it your best shot.
You’ve directed so many action scenes at this point, from sword fights to shootouts, to power ring battles. Do you approach them in their own unique way or do you have a particular method?
No, the thing is this, that when you get script and there’s action in it, I just about always rewrite the action myself with the stunt arranger. You can look at Casino Royale. The opening scene in Casino Royale was six lines in the script. That’s all it was, which meant that we had to come up with a whole sequence that was never, other than, I remember the quote was, “We’re going to have the best parkour chase we’ve ever seen on film.” I think was some crazy quote like that. Basically for the director to work out that scene. That’s the way, and I often change the action. In fact, in just about every instance I develop the action, make it bigger normally than this, because most writers, there are some very good writers of action, but most writers aren’t very good at action. And why should they be? They they concentrate on the characters and the development and so forth. And because I work with obviously a stunt arranger and so forth, we’re in a position to come up to take the basic idea and come up with something based on that idea that is developing it much further than is in the script.
CLEANER is out now in the US and available on SKY Cinema.
