I caught myself falling to sleep during "code name: Cleaner." The previews of other movies were better than this movie. Lucy Liu is the only redemption but she cannot carry this weak movie. The story seems to have been written by 5th graders making it up as they went. Cedric the Entertainer tries but he was given a weak script. Lucy Liu is a cutesy thing. She is a pleasure to watch, but the writers did not write enough good stuff for her. Nicolette Sheridan's role is so bad that her bloopers at the end of the movie are her best lines. Speaking of bloopers, it was not only Nicolette but all the major players who shined in the bloopers. The bloopers outshone the movie. The bloopers proved that the actors could improvise better material than the writers could write.

Those fews morsels that you saw on the previews? Well, those were the highlights of the movie and there was not much more. This movie could have been made into a nice 10 minute short story.

The emotional payoffs were weak.

The plot is contrived. A contrived plot can be forgiven if it is the springboard to a good movie. This contrived plot did not deliver. I could think of so many funnier, more entertaining things to do with Lucy Liu and Cedric. Lucy and Cedric tried their best.

Lucy Liu's role is similar to the role that she played in Lucky Slevin. She played the cute, sexy, nicely dressed very lovable soft core porn object - except in "Cleaner" they took away any overt sexuality and they dressed her more like a nun than the sexy woman that we love.

There was potential in this movie. Cedric and Lucy have proved track records. I went to the movie craving more of what I have seen in prior movies with these established stars, but the directors/ writers did not know what to do with these stars. It reminds me of a person who does not know how do drive a stick shift. They did not know what they were doing. It was pathetic.

Winter 2006/ 2007 has been a sad season for movies. I came home disappointed from this movie. I got more entertainment from YouTube and reruns on the internet.

I was expecting this movie to be horrible, but it wasn't quite that bad. It actually had a few funny and amusing moments. When Jake runs into Diane, played by the hot Nicole Sheridan, and she says she is his wife, his reaction is pretty funny. " I have a hot white wife." And then takes him to his supposed home, and its a huge mansion. He keeps having flashbacks of combat/fighting and has convinced himself he's a secret agent. But we learn he is just an avid video game player. That part was amusing.

The plot is silly but it definitely is not one of the worst movies of the year. 14 year olds will probable like it.

FINAL VERDICT: This is nothing to go out of your way to see. But if you catch it on TV and want 90 minutes of mindless entertainment you may want to check it out.

Codename: The Cleaner reviewed by Sam Osborn

Welcome to January, generally known as the first of two months that consist mostly of studio duds poured discretely from the back of the release slate and into your multiplexes. Like a late August release, January and February releases generally spell 'trash,' with the best of them offering only a nonsensical relief from the heavy, fading awards season. Thus, we have Codename: The Cleaner.

It's the latest work from director Les Mayfield, a man whose earlier films (Flubber, American Outlaws, The Man) are best described as righteously mediocre. This January gem weighs in on a case of missing identity and FBI espionage with Cedric the Entertainer playing Jake Rodgers, waking up in a hotel bed with a dead FBI agent and a cut above his ear. His memory's been fried, leaving him without a name and only fragments of what looks to be a secrets ops combat mission batting around his brain. Diane—played by Nicollete Sheridan, whose beauty has been stretched and manipulated to the point of mimicking a mask from White Chicks—approaches Jake in the hotel lobby, filling him in on some important details pertaining to their supposed marriage and occupation of a bloated estate mansion. It all turns out to be farce, however, when Jake overhears Diane plotting to send Jake into cardiac arrest over a bit of information surrounding a computer chip. Soon Jake's on the run, doing his best play-pretend imitation of spy work, trying to hunt down the computer chip and unveil his own identity.

Like last year's You, Me, and Dupree, Codename: The Cleaner banks heavily on the likability of its lead, giving him the screen-time equivalent of carte blanche. But where Owen Wilson's sly, sandy-haired innocence can grow tiresome, Cedric's rotund antics are nothing if not charming. He leaps to great and often desperate lengths to mine a chuckle, but sometimes surprises us by shoveling out something truly hilarious. So it's a shame that the material surrounding him offers little more than static. Lucy Liu is superbly misused as Jake's girlfriend, rattling off forced punch-lines and rickety, unfitting "sistah" feistiness to match Ms. Sheridan's miscasting as the young, busty blonde (the joke here, I suppose, is that Ms Sheridan's peaked forty). The plot feels improvised; so weak that is seems to modify itself according to whatever improvisation Cedric throws at the script. It all comes together like a Jackie Chan Hong Kong action picture, only with Cedric the Entertainer doing the karate. It works, but only if you slouch in your seat and let your ears and eyes glaze over in a popcorn haze. It is January, after all.

Sam Osborn