The action movie Cleaner, with all its stainless steel charm, revealing glass, and LED amplitude, looks pretty from high up. Congestion vanishes. Odors float away. And the horizon is endless. A little closer to earth, though, and any of those little lines become faults the size of San Andreas. Chief among them is seeing a spunky military dropout take on an army of eco-terrorists. Yet, Cleaner is helmed by one of the best washers in the business and Martin Campbell squeegees this nugget of mediocrity into a pretty sparkle.

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Cleaner’s main wash is a group of activists - led by blink-and-you’ll-miss-him Clive Owen - who ambush an energy company’s annual meeting at London’s Shard skyscraper and take the stockholders hostage. This is not a standard hold-em-for-ransom plot, as an extremist within the group (One Piece’s Taz Skylar) prefers a scorched earth tactic a la Batman arch-nemesis Ra’s al Ghul. Joey Locke, a former soldier now a lonely cleaner (Daisy Ridley), window dresses into her best John McClane to save the day.

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Written by Matthew Orton, Simon Uttley, and Paul Andrew Williams, Cleaner is all drive-thru carry-out with cinematic cliché on the menu. Ridley’s Joey can barely hold a job as the welfare for her autistic brother Michael (Matthew Tuck) is a primary responsibility. But when she is outside the Shard looking in, said responsibility kicks into overdrive, especially as Michael is inside with all the bullets, bombs, and bravado.

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Joey is a fun, enjoyable character, one that Ridley handles with an easy attraction. Outside of her time in a galaxy far, far away, Ridley has set herself up as an actress who can successfully fill up a role – and a screen. From the dramatic in the recent Magpie, to the sorely-overlooked biopic Young Woman and the Sea, Ridley is honest and encaptivating. A girl-next-door with a megawatt smile, she brings a sincere presence to Cleaner that the movie needed but almost did not deserve.

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Similarly, Cleaner was fortunate to have Martin Campbell onboard as director. Campbell knows a thing or two about high-end action pieces (Casino Royale, Goldeneye, The Mask of Zorro, and -sigh- Green Lantern) and Cleaner gleams to a shine. The heights are amplified, the action is cutting, and the stakes as solid as the lightweight script can afford. 

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Campbell crafts some perfect legerdemain by casting the meaningful action way up high so that when the landing eventually happens - Joey’s ridiculously-easy interactions with the Metropolitan police (all that was missing were the Twinkies) not to mention the large swath of film where she is noticeably absent - the action and charm plays off as an admirable apology.

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By all rights, Cleaner should be a forgettable streamer. Instead, the action is fast and furious enough to keep your feet well in the air and away from being grounded within anything silly like realism.

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When you need to leave the earth for 90 minutes, strap your carabiner onto this bungee line and enjoy the ride.