Sunday Movie Experience

Tom Cutler (Samuel L. Jackson) is a retired policeman, and he now makes his living cleaning up the mess whenever someone dies at home, something no one really wants to do themselves. When he gets a request from the police to clean up a homicide scene in a nice villa, it looks like the usual job; it's a bit messy with all the blood lying around, but Tom cleans it up, leaving no traces.

Only later does he learn that the police didn't even know about this homicide, and the victim happens to be a police officer who was an important witness in a police corruption case. Together with the victim's wife (Eva Mendes) and his former police partner Eddie (Ed Harris) he tries to find out what really happened, without trying to get himself killed first. He also has to sort out some domestic problems; his wife was killed long ago, and his 14-year old daughter keeps asking questions about it all.

This movie could have been really good. The 'cleaner' profession is certainly interesting, and the scenes where Sam L. was quietly doing his job were actually some of the most interesting of the movie. That's because the plot had no surprises at all, and you could easily tune in to the movie for the last 20 minutes without having missed a thing. It's a real shame to see good actors such as Ed Harris wasted on this. Director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) obviously knows how to attract well-known actors, and some of the scenes were nicely filmed, but he should have had a better plot to work with. The movie as a whole was completely forgettable.

Hoff says: Most Knight Rider episodes had more suspense than this!