Code Name: The Cleaner
Film Reviewed by Kam Williams


DVD Features Cedric the Entertainer in Comic Crime Caper

 

Code Name: The Cleaner
Click to order via Amazon

Rated PG-13 for sensuality, crude humor, and violence.
Running time: 84 minutes
Studio: New Line Home Video

 

DVD Review by Kam Williams

Poor (0 stars)

Jake Rodgers (Cedric the Entertainer), a janitor for a video game manufacturer, somehow ends up unconscious in a hotel room with a dead FBI Agent and a briefcase containing $250,000 after being hit over head by a mysterious assailant. The plot thickens right off the bat when he awakens with amnesia which leaves him very open to the suggestions of a couple of scheming women with diametrically-opposed intentions.

First, a stranger named Diane (Nicollette Sheridan) convinces him that she’s his wife and whisks him away to a sprawling mansion equipped with a butler (Robert Clarke) ready to wait on him hand and foot. Jake goes gaga over the seductive blonde, screaming euphorically "I’m rich and married to a white woman!" too aroused to figure out that he’s being played.

In truth, she’s in cahoots with a gang of crooks who are after an altered computer chip that they think Jake has in his possession. Later, a triangle of sorts evolves when a waitress named Gina (Lucy Liu) shows up claiming to be his mistress. Truth be told, she’s actually an undercover agent trying who also out to find the aforementioned chip before it can be used for evil purposes.

The scenario created by this underhanded love triangle probably sounds a lot more promising than the humorless fish-out-of-water crime caper contained in Code Name: The Cleaner. Not even diehard Cedric fans could stomach this cringe-inducing performance as a bumbling buffoon.

 

 

Related Links

Blacktrospective 2007 Annual Look Back at the Best (and Worst) in Black Cinema
http://aalbc.com/reviews/blacktrospective_2007.htm

Black Power Line


Read More AALBC.com Film Reviews