Cleaners

I watched season 1 and 2 in 2014. Somehow I missed to write a review here. But this gave me also the opportunity to re-watch the show.

'Cleaners' has a fast, humorous, sometimes brutal style, you can even say it is a parody of ultra-cool modern pulp fiction. Dialogs are short, cliché-loaded on purpose, fighting scenes often over-the-top. The show plays with a number of genres, characters and plots, exploits them to a point, but also let them be where they belong, maybe even to honor them. There are a lot of moments where one can recognize some of the ancestors the show 'cites'. I think the movie 'Face Off' is one of them.

If one cannot stand the cut and some scene change, that's understandable. Some people may find that annoying. I liked it, as it is a big difference to so many other shows.

The show is remarkable reckless to its own story-line, but also very kind to its characters. Everyone, even the most notorious killer, gets a positive or sympathetic side.

I found the balance between dark comedy and thriller just right, at least in the first season. The second season is a bit slower, a bit less funny, and a bit too serious sometimes, but has at least 12 episodes instead of 6. The episode length is always about 22 minutes including credits at ~24fps.

Of course there are some mistakes here and there where you have to raise your 'suspension of disbelief', like in so many other crime shows. That is not an extra minus for a show like this.

About the acting, most entertaining for me was Gina Gershon as 'Mother', Clifton Collins as her 'Samurai' Julian is like a character from Kill Bill, and Emily Osment makes a great Harley Quinn-like companion to a bit colorless Emmanuele Chriqui. Her Veronica (or simply 'V') is the only one that didn't quite convince me, she sometimes looks insecure, what she should currently express, or what her role is in this mess.

But 'Cleaners' is overall very entertaining and funny, so I have to give 7 stars.

12 April 2014: 1. I rented the DVD from Red Box because I thought it was a regular movie. 2. The second reason I rented is because of cute Emmanuelle Chriqui. She is so cute and has great sex appeal. The first time I saw cute Emmanuelle was in a movie with singer Usher "In The Mix" in year 2005 and then again with Adam Sandler in "You Don't Mess With Zohan" in year 2008.

The rest of the cast was okay. Gina Gershon did a good job, but my biggest complaint is because there was too much unnecessary profanity. Some of the scenes were not realistic enough, but in the movies or on television, I guess anything can will happen. Also, I did NOT like the violence on the women where the men were punching and kicking the girls. There are way to many movies now with violence on women/girls in rape scenes or women being abused by men.

One of the other reviews states that the running time of each episode is 15 minutes when you take into the account of the advertisements. This is INCORRECT because the fact of the matter is the timer stops during the two breaks in each episode for advertisements. I know because I watched the last half of season two just last night. Also, regarding the same review... how can take an opinion serious from somebody who apparently isn't familiar with the word "scene" but is reviewing movies and/or TV.

All in all the show is entertaining which is all it is meant to be. When one episode ends leaving you on the edge of your seat all you need to do is click the play button in the middle of the screen and the next episode starts.

Contract Workers (read Killers) Roxi (Osment) and Veronica (Cheriqui) are sent by Mother (Gina Gershon) on a mission to take a car to a certain location. Seems simple enough until they have a flat tire and need to look in the trunk. What they see changes everything.

This could have been pretty good had the Director not fooled around with loud, uncomfortable music and inserting scene shots as thought they were bullets throughout. This was most distracting and gave off that cheesy vibe. The dialogues and acting were pretty good. Okay, we do get a little tired of Gina Gershon curling her lips when the camera is on her. Quite distracting.

Originally, I thought this would be about female assassins, but this story didn't go that way. Maybe in another movie with the Roxie and Veronica, who are pretty good together.

This story takes a page from a Jason Statham movie SAFE and if you have seen that movie, then you know what this is all about. Kind of.

The title is misleading. Cleaners are people who clean up crime scenes or bodies from crime scenes. Here the crime scenes were created. See?

There are a lot of hand-to-hand fights and they are very good. No CGI.

It was the uncomfortable music and scene shots that came in like a Gatling Gun that proved too over the top. (4/10)

Violence: Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: Yes.

I wasn't expecting much from this show but holy hell it was bad in so many ways. The acting is ridiculous and bordering on Porn Star quality acting, the actual filming makes the entire show look like its on a row boat in a typhoon. The music ans seen cuts are laughable. The whole show is sad how cheaply it has been put together, and mainly because you can tell they had a decent budget that they could have done much much more with.

Each episode is really only about 15 minutes when you take out the adverts, excessively long credits, and scene cuts where they have added horrible cross cut garbage.

2 stars is being generous.