← Back to Reviews
in
Clean
Oscar winner Adrien Brody (The Pianist) serves as the co-producer, co-screenwriter, and star of 2020's Clean, a somber character study that starts off promisingly but then degenerates into a standard tale of violence and revenge that becomes too bloody and nonsensical for the viewer to completely engage.
Brody plays the title character, a small-town garbageman who attends NA meetings and is trying to salvage a relationship with a teenage girl he loves like a daughter. Clean struggles with staying sober and trying to get past the demons of his past until said demons rear their ugly head and demand vengeance.
The screenplay by Brody and director Paul Solet starts off quite effectively as sort of an homage to the 1976 classic Taxi Driver, zeroing in on this loner Clean, stuck in a dead end job that he hates but seems to accept as his payback for his past, quietly screaming on the inside as violence visions of his past don't allow him to sleep. If the truth be told, the film was a lot more interesting when the effectively edited visions of Clean's past remained that way, inside his head. Once we learn that the people and places who made up Clean's past are still a part of his present existence. this is where the film begins to lose us.
Unfortunately, Clean's past comes to fruition as a dangerous group of drug dealers who use a fishing business as a front. Their appearance comes with a lot of squirm-worthy and unrelenting violence that often turned the stomach and did little to advance the story. The scene of psycho Michael violently chopping fish with an axe while their blood covered his face went on way too long. Ditto the scene of Michael leaving a church service which led to a scene of the preacher reading the scripture while we were treated to video of Michael and his boys packaging heroine.
Brody's performance is solid though and is a nice reminder what a powerhouse actor he is, but the subject matter is such a downer and though it does seem to be an homage to Taxi Driver, without Martin Scorsese behind the camera, the homage gets lost and really hard to appreciate.
Oscar winner Adrien Brody (The Pianist) serves as the co-producer, co-screenwriter, and star of 2020's Clean, a somber character study that starts off promisingly but then degenerates into a standard tale of violence and revenge that becomes too bloody and nonsensical for the viewer to completely engage.
Brody plays the title character, a small-town garbageman who attends NA meetings and is trying to salvage a relationship with a teenage girl he loves like a daughter. Clean struggles with staying sober and trying to get past the demons of his past until said demons rear their ugly head and demand vengeance.
The screenplay by Brody and director Paul Solet starts off quite effectively as sort of an homage to the 1976 classic Taxi Driver, zeroing in on this loner Clean, stuck in a dead end job that he hates but seems to accept as his payback for his past, quietly screaming on the inside as violence visions of his past don't allow him to sleep. If the truth be told, the film was a lot more interesting when the effectively edited visions of Clean's past remained that way, inside his head. Once we learn that the people and places who made up Clean's past are still a part of his present existence. this is where the film begins to lose us.
Unfortunately, Clean's past comes to fruition as a dangerous group of drug dealers who use a fishing business as a front. Their appearance comes with a lot of squirm-worthy and unrelenting violence that often turned the stomach and did little to advance the story. The scene of psycho Michael violently chopping fish with an axe while their blood covered his face went on way too long. Ditto the scene of Michael leaving a church service which led to a scene of the preacher reading the scripture while we were treated to video of Michael and his boys packaging heroine.
Brody's performance is solid though and is a nice reminder what a powerhouse actor he is, but the subject matter is such a downer and though it does seem to be an homage to Taxi Driver, without Martin Scorsese behind the camera, the homage gets lost and really hard to appreciate.