In director Hadi Hajaig's thriller
'Cleanskin', we are introduced to Ewan Keane, as played by
actor Sean Bean at his moody, brooding, grizzled best, a man
who is a special operative who really loves his native Great
Britain and really hates terrorists. Think of the thing you
hate most on the planet Earth, then multiply that by 503 and
that's now much Ewan Keane hates terrorist. On this
particular day Ewan is playing bodyguard to some fat bastard
who is carrying a briefcase full of an extremely lethal form
of Semtex. Why this fat bastard is carting around
plastic explosives to parts unknown through crowded mall areas
is a mystery to me, but there he is doing just that. The
problem with this day is that Asham (Abhin Galeya), a British
born Muslim with terrorist intentions, knew he was going to be
there and took that briefcase from the fat bastard, killing a
number of people in the process and causing Ewan some grave
injury. Ewan recovers and he will spend the rest of this
film trying to track down Asham before he completes his lethal
endgame… though, as per usual, all isn't always what it seems.
Though Sean Bean is the headliner in 'Cleanskin', this film's
main focus is on the journey of Ash and how he made the
transition from an ordinary, albeit terminally pissed off
college student, to a blunt force object of death and
destruction.
So as we mentioned, Ash is a law student, very bright, but
none too happy with the world around him, particularly how
it's treating his fellow Muslim brothers back in the Middle
East. He also has a girlfriend in the lovely Kate
(Tuppence Middleton), a fellow law student. The problem
with this situation is that Kate is a very young
Western woman who likes to have a good time,
while her boyfriend is a fairly rigid Middle Eastern young man
who doesn't like his girls definition of a good time one
little bit which only adds to his overall despair with the
world.
Then as meets the Nabil the Holy Man (Peter Polycarpou), the
man who will be the fulcrum for Ash's blunt force object of
destruction, a man who points out the problems with the world,
the problems with westerners, the disregard that we have for
anything outside of self gratification and how these people
need to burn. And a terrorist is born. Or a
freedom fighter, depending on where you're from.
Back to Ewan, who under the detailed instructions of
undersecretary Charlotte McQueen (Charlotte Rampling) is
desperately trying to stop the next attack, along with his new
partner Mark (Tom Burke), and Ewan is not adverse to using
extreme, civil rights violating means to get to the answers
that he desires. The problem is that these answers Ewan
is getting never seems to add up properly, and he's always one
step behind Ash which shouldn't be happening. If only
Ash and Ewan knew what we are going to know, they'd probably
rethink things a bit.
Hadi Hajaig's 'Cleanskin' roughly breaks out to three parts
impressive filmmaking and two parts rudimentary filmmaking
which still adds up to a pretty good movie according to my
slipshod mathematics. For instance we have a fairly
rudimentary storyline here, one featuring a really angry,
almost completely blinded agent with a sad history heatedly
tracking down a crazed Middle Eastern terrorist. Adding
to the 'been there, seen that' element of this basic storyline
is Sean Bean playing completely to type as the damaged,
brooding, overly violent combustible agent. But,
considering it is Sean Bean doing it and this is something he
does so well, this is a bit of rudimentary filmmaking we can
stand behind. But what makes this rudimentary storyline
impressive is the fact that the focal figure is the actual
terrorist. Instead of just being a cackling cartoonish
psycho from one of those Golan-Globus laugh fests from the
eighties, actor Abhin Galeya, in a wonderful performance gives
Ash a face, a personality, and a trajectory from where he was
to where he is. We are given reasons to why he believes
he has to do these things he does, and of course the validity
of these reasons are highly debatable, but they are least
presented here in a way that at least seems valid to the
character we are dealing with.
There was a fair bit of action and bloody violence in this
movie which did heighten the tension and the entertainment
factor, at least for me it did, but the movie also suffered
from a couple of plot devices, which at best we can call
contrivances. You know, when something completely
obscure shows up apparently having nothing to do with
anything, problem being you've seen enough movies to know that
this completely obscure thing will have something to do with
everything? Or the coincidences and innuendo all leading
towards the inevitable. We could also harp a little on
the overblown conspiracy theory conclusion, but we do like a
good conspiracy theory so we won't complain about that too
much either. Also, and this isn't really a criticism,
but 'Cleanskin' probably isn't the movie you want to watch if
you're searching for your happy place because this is one
grim, miserable and depressing world that these characters
live in. I know life generally sucks but jeez.
Depressing and violent though it may be, 'Cleanskin' was still
a very well acted, very intense, well crafted thriller from
director Hadi Hajaig. Another fine entry into the
British crime thriller genre.
