3 Star

Your Past Won’t Let You Forget.

Clean is Adrian Brody‘s (The Pianist, The French Dispatch, Blonde) brainchild as he co-wrote with director Paul Solet (Bullet Head, Dark Summer) produced, composed and stars as Clean, in this dark and present day dystopian America. He must make amends for his murky past.

From the start you know our protagonist Clean (Adrien Brody) has a murky past. As the monologue carries on we find ourselves in a winter of New York, as a man drives around in a garbage truck emptying waste bins and picking dumped stuff off the snowy streets and back alleys. He keeps himself to himself unless he is at meetings with veterans and others with troubled minds. The rest of his time is taken up with fixing old things, boarding and painting the abandoned houses in his neighbourhood, also he is always around when young Dianda (Chandler Ari Dupont, The Prayer Box, Charm City Kings) goes to school, as she reminds him of his daughter. She lives with her grandma after her parents died.

We don’t need saving, you know.

The things he fixes up, he takes to the local pawn shop where owner Kurtis (RZA, American Gangster, Repo Men) is always happy to buy what ever he brings. Dianda is a big part of his attention as he fixes up a pushbike for her when  the school bus service is axed, but leaves her open to hassle from the guys that hag around the hood. One of these young men is Mikey (Richie Merritt, White Boy Rick) the son of Michael (Glenn Fleshler, Joker, Gods Behaving Badly) a local Italian fishmonger come drug dealer.

As Clean goes about his business, he finds himself out by Michael’s Fishmongers emptying his commercial bin which is full of smelly squid and the boxes are covered in blood, but it has nothing to do with him, so when Michael offers him some trouble money he says it is OK, what he saw was Michael’s earlier work with a Chinese supplier. Messy work.

Clean’s sleep is filled with nightmares of his lost daughter and his past jobs. There is always a bloodied monkey wrench and a shotgun and lots of blood, that brings him back to reality.

His vulnerability belies what is hidden deep down within his psyche.

What brings back these dark skills is when he sees Dianda being abused inside the hoods house. This leads him to find his old monkey wrench and set about those about to do Dianda harm, the only problem is that Mikey is one of the young men in the house.

A father will always have to protect their children, even if that father is Michael.

With this violence done, three people have to go on the run, as advised by Clean’s sponsor, the barber Travis (Mykelti Williamson, Forrest Gump, Heat) tells him to run and keep going. The one thing in their favour is, Michael doesn’t know who he is trying to have killed.

Clean will be available on Digital 4th July