Code Name: The Cleaner

Ah, the stench of crap cinema is already filling the air. As is Hollywood tradition, the period after the holidays is a dumping ground, where borderline products that should probably go straight to video wind up assaulting the big screen. With this flick, we have the year’s first bona fide clunker. Cedric the Entertainer stars as a man who wakes up with amnesia and a dead FBI agent sharing his bed. As chunks of his memory come back, he becomes convinced that he’s a secret agent smuggling some sort of high-intelligence computer chip. As the story unwinds, more secrets are revealed, and the resulting situation is lame, lame, lame. The normally luminous Lucy Liu is given the embarrassing role as Cedric the Entertainer’s love interest (yeah, right) while Nicollette Sheridan dances around in her underwear, and Will Patton’s acting career continues its progression down the proverbial toilet. This was directed by the man who made Flubber and Blue Streak, a true indicator of this film’s hellish possibilities.