‘Cleaner’ Director Martin Campbell on Combating ‘Die Hard’ Comparisons, Looking Back at His Bond Legacy and Turning Down ‘The Mask of Zorro’ Three Times

variety.com:

Todd Gilchrist After directing not one but two pivotal entries in the James Bond franchise, “GoldenEye” and “Casino Royale,” Martin Campbell has accomplished more than enough to earn a permanent place in the action movie firmament.

But his sturdy, unshowy virtuosity on everything from “The Mask of Zorro” to two versions of “Edge of Darkness” to “Memory” has made him a broader fixture in the industry for more than five decades.

Campbell’s latest film, “Cleaner,” leverages his considerable experience as a purveyor of thrills. In it, Daisy Ridley plays a former soldier-turned-window washer enlisted to defeat a radical eco-terrorist group that takes over an energy company’s corporate headquarters after discovering that her disabled brother is among their hostages.

Despite bristling at comparisons of the film to “Die Hard,” Campbell delivers a literal high-wire act of suspense that required Ridley to perform a majority of her own bone-crunching stunts even as he most heavily leaned on her acting muscles to create a desperate, vivid (if foul-mouthed) portrait of heroism under hard circumstances.