Cleanskin

Cleanskin

The dictionary defines a cleanskin as “a person without a criminal record.”  In director Hadi Hajaig’s tense new Brit-thriller that’s Ash (Abhin Galeya), a homegrown terrorist unknown to the security services.

When an unscrupulous American arms dealer is the victim of a bloody assassination in a London hotel and the suitcase full of Semtex he’s selling is stolen by the killer, it’s up to grizzled, on-the-edge spook Ewan (Sean Bean) to get it back before the streets run red with blood.  However, has he met his match in Ash, a young Islamic extremist, radicalised at university, who’s operating completely under the radar to orchestrate a series of suicide bombings around London?

Handsome, charming and intelligent, Ash is totally committed to his cause, sewing semtex into puffa jackets, allowing suicide bombers to get close to their targets without raising suspicion.  As his bombs bring terror to the streets of London, Ash finds himself questioning the path he’s embarked on when a chance meeting with old flame Kate (Tuppence Middleton) rekindles their romance and offers him a last chance of redemption.  But Ewan is closing in for the kill and Ash is determined to complete his mission whatever the cost…

A taut, tense, bleak little thriller, Cleanskin has a pleasingly cynical, ‘70s feel.  While Sean Bean’s maverick secret agent Ewan and his propensity to beat information out of suspects (how many other mainstream films feature the protagonist punching a hooker in the spine?) will no doubt invite comparison with 24’s Jack Bauer, he has a lot more in common with Edward Woodward’s paranoid, conflicted Callan.  Driven by bitterness and a desire for revenge, Ewan is in over his head, unable to trust his smooth rookie partner (Tom Burke), and is certainly being manipulated by his bloodless handler (Charlotte Rampling).  He’s at the heart of a conspiracy he can only dimly perceive and Bean makes the most of his strangely underwritten role bringing a moral righteousness to Ewan’s uncomplicated character.

Galeya’s Ash meanwhile is no cardboard cut-out raghead terrorist.  He’s a complex, sympathetic character, adrift in a society he no longer feels a part of.  He’s a man without a country; he belongs nowhere.  Seduced by charismatic preacher Nabil (Peter Polycarpou) Ash is wholly committed to carrying out his suicide bombing until he bumps into Kate completely by chance and then senses another way out for himself.  Galeya is very good, maintaining the audience’s sympathy even as he’s directing a bombing campaign that destroys Borough Market and turns that nice girl from Eastenders (an effective cameo by Michelle Ryan) into jam.  Despite the terrible things he does, ultimately Ash is the most sympathetic and well-rounded character in the film, the most human.

The luminous Tuppence Middleton is wasted here in an underwritten role as Ash’s ex while Fox and Rampling have little to do except be ominous but Polycarpou, an actor you’re probably more familiar with from TV sitcoms, is excellent as the friendly, jovial extremist Nabil, a man as likely to be talking football as he is jihad.  The film’s most surprising and chilling turn however comes from Silas Carson’s Amin, an almost demonic assassin sent to London to murder a former soldier by executing him live on the Internet.  Amin turns up for ten minutes in the middle of the film then disappears again but Carson’s performance brings a sub-zero chill that hangs over the film like a fog.

While the film isn’t without it’s problems; it’s at least 15 minutes too long and the plot is a little predictable, like a particularly gritty episode of Spooks, director/writer Hajaig (who previously made the ambitious little horror movie Puritan) succeeds in humanising the inhuman, in finding a sympathetic way to depict, without ever condoning or even trying rationalise one man’s journey to extremism.  Admirably even-handed and restrained, Cleanskin is a brutal, compelling meditation on Britain’s War on Terror.

David Watson

Writer/Director

Hadi Hajaig

Starring

Sean Bean, Abhin Galeya, Tuppence Middleton, Charlotte Rampling, James Fox, Peter Polycarpou, Michelle Ryan

Running time

107 minutes

Year

2012