It takes roughly 30 minutes for Clean to clue you into where it takes place.
If you pay very close attention, you could probably glean that the film happens in a vaguely lower-middle-class working town, perhaps on the East Coast or in the Rust Belt. The fact the location is the Adirondacks is actually irrelevant. That is core to Clean’s fatal problem. The film rarely gives you a reason to pay attention or care about anything happening on-screen.
If you can manage: Clean is about a sanitation worker (presumably) nicknamed Clean (Adrien Brody) with a “violent and traumatic past.” He makes his way through life by driving around in a striking matte black car, fixing old electronics to sell at a pawn shop, and fixing up the exteriors of abandoned old houses. He largely keeps to himself but watches over a young black girl who reminds him of his daughter, an absence tied to that “traumatic and violent past.” Their tentative friendship coincidentally puts him at odds with the town’s local drug-pushing psychopathic kingpin. Clean finds himself in a showdown that challenges just how much of his “traumatic and violent past” he can wash off.
If the quotations around “traumatic and violent past” suggest frustration, it’s because we’ve been here before. Keanu Reeves and the beloved John Wick franchise kicked off a new era of traumatized men seeking vengeance for tiny and huge slights. That in and of itself isn’t bad. What makes Clean especially galling is its aggressive mediocrity and downright refusal to do or say anything unique or interesting. We know little about Clean’s world and not just the name of his town. There are allusions to how drugs ravaged this almost-nameless community. However it is mostly lip service, lazily supported with scenes of indiscriminate bad behavior. As for Clean, there is barely any insight into his past other than repetitious and bloody flashbacks that cut to him waking up sobbing. In the present, he walks around like a ghost, which might’ve been compelling if we knew him apart from some character traits on a scratchpad. (The pad would say “hitman” and “father.”)
The failure lies at the feet of the fruitless collaboration between director Paul Solet and Adrien Brody, who co-wrote the film. The script is a shallow and confounding mess. The dialogue is empty, to the point a somewhat notable screenwriter might consider parody. Its utter lack of specificity leads the film towards problematic character depictions, to be generous. Solet’s rendering of the page is just as empty and aimless. His camera lacks intent, capturing Clean’s flat world without energy or even a desire to pull us in. It leads to some ridiculous moments that will have you asking, out loud, what is even happening. Solet does find something resembling spark in the film’s gorier scenes. Once the initial surprise wears off, though, they also become tedious and nearly nonsensical.
It’s a marvel that Adrien Brody manages to act himself out of the hole he literally wrote himself into. He certainly looks the part of a grizzled, damaged former killer of some kind, from the scraggly beard to the ripped torso. His script doesn’t allow him to do much besides sadly glower and shoot a wide array of weaponry, but when he does get to emote, it does register. It’s enough of a performance to make you wonder what Brody could do within the genre if he were less directly involved in the film’s development.
I’m not sure what Clean wants to be, and I don’t think it knows either. It can’t be a passion project with so little passion behind it. It can’t claim to be an even sub-standard selection of its specific slice of the crime drama genre. Instead, we’re left with a baffling and inept film that is infuriating only because of the time wasted with it, even though it’s a tight 90 minutes. Given the minuscule impression it leaves, Clean is best left dirty.
Clean is currently playing in select theaters, and it is currently available on Digital and On Demand.
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A late-stage millennial lover of most things related to pop culture. Becomes irrationally irritated by Oscar predictions that don’t come true.
