In the process, however, he winds up smashing in the face of Mikey (Richie Merritt), the recently paroled son of Russian drug kingpin Michael (Glenn Fleshler), who operates out of a fish market and who’s frustrated with his son for hanging out with Black hoods and listening to rap music. Clean’s adversaries are first a group of Black men who want to corrupt Dianda, which motivates Clean to take his trusty wrench to their noggins. “Clean” eventually throws some Christian religious elements and a giant Clean back tattoo into its mix - not to mention a climactic explosion of avenging-angel carnage that’s prefaced by Clean admitting he’s “back” - thereby completing its transformation into an unabashed riff on Keanu Reeves’ 2014 hit.
Solet and Brody’s script wastes no time also likening him to a beaten dog (at which point he feeds a stray) and conveying, via flashbacks, his guilt-stricken grief over the death of his young Black daughter, which is why he now spends his mornings bringing food to in-need Black teen Dianda (Chandler DuPont).
No matter how hard I try, I can’t wash away the past.” That effectively spells out the protagonist’s Travis Bickle-grade state of mind, as well as his secret, lethal past. An endless onslaught of ugliness … Where does it all go? I’ve got blood on my hands. In a dark, wintery New York City, Clean (Brody) performs his garbageman duties in the early morning, musing in interior monologues about the “sea of filth. That’ll make it a tough sell following its Tribeca Film Festival premiere (delayed from last year), although genre fans hungry for hackneyed action with a healthy dose of “Taxi Driver”-ish brooding may welcome its by-the-numbers mayhem. Obvious and derivative in borderline-shameless fashion, it’s a B-movie knock-off with little originality and even less flair. If a story about a reformed killer returning to his murderous ways to hunt down and slaughter Russian mobsters sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the synopsis for “John Wick.” It’s also, however, the premise of “ Clean,” director Paul Solet’s thriller - co-written by leading man Adrien Brody - about a hit man getting back in homicidal business.
0 kommentar(er)
