Cleanskin - Until the Hit - DVD

Movie: Undercover agent Ewan (Sean Bean) faces the biggest defeat of his career when the person he was supposed to be protecting is shot dead and highly explosive material is stolen before his eyes. This has now apparently fallen into the hands of terrorists who intend to use it to carry out some deadly bombings in London. To do this they are using so-called cleanskins, sleepers who have so far not been apprehended by the authorities and are therefore almost impossible to catch before they can drag themselves and many innocent people to their deaths. One of these radical terrorists is student Ash (Abhin Galeya), who has actually been living a more westernized life with his girlfriend Kate (Tuppence Middleton). But after their breakup, Ash has fallen into the clutches of hate preacher Nabil (Peter Polycarpou), who has eventually turned him into a dangerous terrorist. It is now up to Ewan to find him with his new partner Mark (Tom Burke). And after London has already been rocked by the first attacks, Ewan knows he must resort to any means possible to prevent another terrorist attack...

Cleanskin is a tense political thriller that explores the subject of terrorism from two perspectives. On one side is undercover agent Ewan, who is convinced he is acting in the name of justice and who wants to prevent the loss of innocent lives at all costs. On the other side is the suicide bomber Ash. He too believes in sacrificing his life for the righteous cause. Both men, however, are mere pawns in a murderous game of misplay on both sides.

And therein lies the film's great strength. Although the director repeatedly uses well-known clichés, especially when drawing his characters, he avoids the typical black-and-white painting that one always encounters in this genre. There is no clearly definable good and evil here. The actions of the protagonists, but not their motivations, can be clearly divided into right and wrong. While Ewan has quite very dark sides and especially his clients are characterized by unscrupulousness and corruption, there is also something good in Ash, which is only more and more dwindling from the insane mindset that is hammered into him by Nabil.

Although the constant flashbacks, which show how the young man changes from a carefree student more and more to a stone-cold killer, are a bit confusing at the beginning and interrupt the actual flow of the plot again and again, they are necessary to make Ash just not a one-dimensional character. This not only gives his character transformation a tremendous amount of drama, but also makes the finale feel much more effective.

With convincing actors and a good mix of quieter character development and hard-hitting, sometimes very bloody action, Cleanskin - Bis zum Anschlag stands out positively from the crowd of similarly knitted political thrillers. It's not a perfect film, some plot twists are very predictable and some dialogue is very cliché. The whole thing is exciting and thrillingly staged and even makes you think here and there. A solid political thriller that also has a lasting effect. And that is despite minor weaknesses absolutely worth watching!

Picture + Sound: The technical implementation of the thriller is on a good level. The picture is very clean and has a high level of detail sharpness, which only weakens a little in the darker scenes. There is also nothing to criticize about the strong mixed colors. As for the audio, quieter moments where the frontal area is more dominated by dialogue alternate with more action-packed scenes where well-mixed surround effects come into play. Good!

Extras: As a bonus, the DVD has a decent making of (about 21 min.) to offer in addition to the trailer for the film. A bit lean, but well worth watching!

Conclusion: Cleanskin is a suspenseful thriller that shows terrorism not only from the point of view of the secret service, which tries to fight it, but also from that of an assassin. The mix of dramatically dense scenes and hard-hitting fight sequences makes this film extremely suspenseful until its consistent conclusion. The DVD of this home movie premiere is technically well realized, the bonus material is a bit meager, but worth watching in terms of content. If you like political thrillers of the somewhat harder kind, you can safely access here. Recommendable

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp