Nome in codice - Cleaner

I don't know why some people slander this movie. They should get some antidepressants or something - somethings not right with these people anyway.

This movie is well made, has good actors doing a great job, interesting (but somewhat predictable) plot! It has pretty much everything you want from a nice action/comedy movie and I certainly enjoyed the movie a lot.

I almost gave it a seven but I'm a cheap b*stard - and even if it's closer to a seven than six - it falls just short of it... =)

I just made up my mind - why the h*ll not...

For a James Bond prototype, this isn't that bad. One of the few that deserve more attention then they really get. The only other 'Bond' prototype that is as funny as this one would be Johnny English. Yes, we all have seen the plot, but it's the twist to the storyline that keeps it interesting. This time our hero wakes up in a hotel room, on the bed next to the dead man's body. It starts out more of a mystery, then quickens the pace just before the half way mark comes. Cedric is clearly at the top of his game both pyhsically and in his jokes. For sure he does a better job at keeping his material censored, heck, depending on the child, this could even be a kids movie.

Codename: The Cleaner reviewed by Sam Osborn

Welcome to January, generally known as the first of two months that consist mostly of studio duds poured discretely from the back of the release slate and into your multiplexes. Like a late August release, January and February releases generally spell 'trash,' with the best of them offering only a nonsensical relief from the heavy, fading awards season. Thus, we have Codename: The Cleaner.

It's the latest work from director Les Mayfield, a man whose earlier films (Flubber, American Outlaws, The Man) are best described as righteously mediocre. This January gem weighs in on a case of missing identity and FBI espionage with Cedric the Entertainer playing Jake Rodgers, waking up in a hotel bed with a dead FBI agent and a cut above his ear. His memory's been fried, leaving him without a name and only fragments of what looks to be a secrets ops combat mission batting around his brain. Diane—played by Nicollete Sheridan, whose beauty has been stretched and manipulated to the point of mimicking a mask from White Chicks—approaches Jake in the hotel lobby, filling him in on some important details pertaining to their supposed marriage and occupation of a bloated estate mansion. It all turns out to be farce, however, when Jake overhears Diane plotting to send Jake into cardiac arrest over a bit of information surrounding a computer chip. Soon Jake's on the run, doing his best play-pretend imitation of spy work, trying to hunt down the computer chip and unveil his own identity.

Like last year's You, Me, and Dupree, Codename: The Cleaner banks heavily on the likability of its lead, giving him the screen-time equivalent of carte blanche. But where Owen Wilson's sly, sandy-haired innocence can grow tiresome, Cedric's rotund antics are nothing if not charming. He leaps to great and often desperate lengths to mine a chuckle, but sometimes surprises us by shoveling out something truly hilarious. So it's a shame that the material surrounding him offers little more than static. Lucy Liu is superbly misused as Jake's girlfriend, rattling off forced punch-lines and rickety, unfitting "sistah" feistiness to match Ms. Sheridan's miscasting as the young, busty blonde (the joke here, I suppose, is that Ms Sheridan's peaked forty). The plot feels improvised; so weak that is seems to modify itself according to whatever improvisation Cedric throws at the script. It all comes together like a Jackie Chan Hong Kong action picture, only with Cedric the Entertainer doing the karate. It works, but only if you slouch in your seat and let your ears and eyes glaze over in a popcorn haze. It is January, after all.

Sam Osborn

This film begins with a man named "Jake Rogers" (Cedric Antonio Kyles) waking up in a bed at a hotel and finding a dead body right next to him. To make matters even worse, because of a recent head injury he not only doesn't remember how he got into this situation, but he also doesn't remember who he is. However, as luck would have it there is a small attache case with approximately $250,000 in it and an attractive blonde named "Diane" (Nicollette Sheridan) waiting for him in the hotel lobby who claims to be his wife. And to top it off he is apparently quite rich as well. However, that doesn't seem to matter as much as it should because he soon realizes that there are people out to kill him over a computer chip that he doesn't know anything about. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film definitely had some good humor here and there. Likewise, having two attractive actresses like Lucy Liu (as the waitress named "Gina") and the aforementioned Nicollette Sheridan certainly didn't hurt matters either. Having said that, however, I must admit that some of the comedy was rather low-brow and the film could have used a bit more suspense or drama as well. Even so, I thought that this was an okay film for the time spent and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Average.

Watching this movie, I kept thinking they couldn't afford to have a real script written, and must have run out of money when they were about 2/3 of the way through, and couldn't finish editing it. Not to mention, they probably couldn't afford Martin Lawrence for the lead role, so they filled it with Cedric the Entertainer, who does better in supporting roles. Cedric does have several funny scenes, though.

The plot is completely unintelligible, and undeveloped, but based on the genre you can predict most of the action. It's the ever-popular "hero has something secret the bad guys want, so they can sell it to terrorists for a fortune, but it's missing." Not to mention, the scenes or "shticks" that have been better done elsewhere. For example, every time Cedric tried to be funny with judo moves, I kept thinking that he ripped that off from Martin, who does it much better. There is a brief cat-fight scene that is far inferior to the one in Undercover Brother (which is an excellent movie, and much funnier overall).