Code Name: The Cleaner (2007)

Code Name: The Cleaner centers on an amnesiac janitor who is fooled into believing he’s an undercover agent on the trail of an international arms ring involving the CIA and FBI. Liu will play an actual agent who falls for the janitor, while Hurley adds intrigue as a femme fatale who uses the hapless worker for her Machiavellian devices.

Cedric the Entertainer stars as Jake, a seemingly regular guy who wakes up in a hotel room with a bump on his head next to a dead body and a briefcase containing $250,000 in cash. As if that wasn’t enough of a predicament, Jake can’t remember how he got there or who he is. The beautiful and mysterious Diane (Nicollette Sheridan) shows up on the scene and claims to be Jake’s wife, taking him to a magnificent mansion that she says belongs to Jake.

When Jake discovers that Diane is trying to drug him for information, he escapes and seeks refuge in a local diner, only to run in to Gina (Lucy Liu), a waitress who claims to be his girlfriend. She tells him that in reality he’s a maintenance worker for a video game manufacturer, but Jake becomes convinced he is really an undercover agent for the CIA – his code name: “The Cleaner” – and sets out to prove it.

Soon Jake and Gina are being followed by FBI agents, as well as Riley (Will Patton), an employee of the video game company who tells Jake that he has hidden away a high-tech device that could incriminate Hauck (Mark Dacascos), the CEO of the company who is the key player in a huge arms deal about to go down. And throughout all of this, Jake is experiencing flashbacks of being in a war zone and assembling a weapon. It’s up to Jake to not only figure out who he really is, but also try to uncover the true identities of those surrounding him.

Lucy Liu Talks About Code Name: The Cleaner

Lucy Liu co-stars with Cedric the Entertainer and Nicollette Sheridan (Desperate Housewives) in the action comedy, Code Name: The Cleaner. Cedric the Entertainer plays a guy named Jake who wakes up with a bump on his head and a case of amnesia. Liu stars as a waitress who tries to convince Jake she’s his girlfriend and that he’s not actually a CIA agent but instead does maintenance work at a video game factory.

In the Mood for a Little Comedy: Liu says she’s always on the lookout for a good comedy script. “…I think it’s one of the most challenging things to do; it’s one of the most fun things to do. I think doing a comedy with a comedian is always very helpful because you’ve got a little cushion because if you’re not funny, he’s got to be funny.”

Working with Cedric the Entertainer: “I had seen a lot of his movies before and had actually seen a lot of his comedy, too. But I’ve never seen him in a lead role before, so it was actually refreshing. I really enjoyed watching him in the movie as an audience member. Do you know what I mean? The clog dancing is one of my favorite scenes, and the Ricola thing. It’s all improv and he’s just hilarious.”

Liu said it wasn’t difficult to keep up with Cedric the Entertainer’s improvisations. The actor / comedian just raised the bar to a higher level. “It pushes you to improve your skills and sort of just get off the script and do whatever it is. You’re so aligned to doing what is written a lot of the times. I come from a theatre background and you do what’s written. You pause when you’re supposed to pause. You take your moments but, ultimately, you respect the writer’s wishes. And, in this case, we sort of just tore the whole thing up and re-wrote and did things on the day, especially if he was improvising as we were doing the scenes. So it kind of pushed me to just be a lot more open with the dialogue and come up with things that could be funnier.”

On Being Ready to Get Physical in Code Name: The Cleaner: Liu joked that she doesn’t have to worry much about stunts involving martial arts at this point in her career. “Oddly, it’s now ingrained in my body. (Laughing) It’s like, ‘Okay, we’re going to do a fight scene off the fly.’ We hadn’t planned on doing the fight scene with Nicollette [Sheridan] and suddenly they’re like, ‘Let’s do a fight scene together at the end.’

I helped choreograph a lot of it because I felt very comfortable doing it. I know all of the different moves that I have learned from my other movies. It just felt like a very natural progression for me and I incorporated other things that I’ve learned. Like, my body has sort of changed and become more flexible so we added splits. We added different things and also added comedic elements of using the toilet plunger or the toilet brush, to make it extra funny.”

Stepping Up as an Executive Producer: Liu explained how she became involved in the producing side of Code Name: The Cleaner. “Well, they wanted me in the movie. I met with Cedric and I fell in love with him, and I wanted to work with him. I just felt like there needed to be some changes in the script. It just seemed like a lot of, you know, getting your hands involved. They said, ‘Well, come on board as an executive producer. You can be creative. You can get in there.’

Sometimes when you sign on as an actress, you don’t want to step on too many toes in terms of the writing. But they were completely open to it and we gutted it completely. I mean, because originally the woman was written as someone who’s Jamaican. So it was either Jamaican or me. ‘Up to you. Your choice.’ (Laughing) So obviously we just sort of changed everything around and just made her not as angry, and not as straight, but made her a little more comedic and gave her a little more sass. And on the day when we were improvising in the scenes, we tried to make it funnier, too. I think we had a really good chemistry together offset, so hopefully it came off on screen as well. Just that they have a really nice physical dynamic that I think is always enjoyable in a comedy – the physical energy between the people.”

Liu believes that special connection with Cedric the Entertainer was there from the beginning. “I feel like people are sort of beginning to realize that they can kind of match me up with anybody. Like you can put me with Josh Hartnett, you can put me with… Like the ethnicity boundary isn’t really there. It doesn’t really matter. It’s sort of an open arena, and it shouldn’t be about color. It should just be about relationships, you know? I like to sort of meld that into my work and make sure that it really comes naturally no matter who it is, and what ethnicity. It shouldn’t matter. Actually, somebody pointed out in the poster, that it’s a very multi-ethnic movie. I was like, ‘Oh, I didn’t even notice that. Probably because I’m Asian! I didn’t think too much about it.’ So to me, I thought that was one of the attractions.”

Lucy Liu on Her Upcoming Projects: “A project coming up that I’ve shot awhile ago, that may be coming out, who knows, is a thriller, a sort of vampire horror movie called Rise. That I think is coming out next fall, but I’m not sure. And then I did a movie with Cillian Murphy over the summer. It was a romantic comedy, a very small movie called Watching the Detectives.”

Liu had a good time working with Murphy. “He’s great. He’s incredibly talented. It was his first foray into comedy. I think he did a great job. You know, he’s very impressive because he focuses a lot on his family and he’s not an intense person where you can’t approach him and talk to him. Because all of his movies are so incredible, and he’s always playing such dramatic roles, it’s really refreshing to see him doing something much lighter and comedic. And he’s running around naked in half the movie.”

Code Name: The Cleaner )2007)

Directed by: Les Mayfield
Starring: Lucy Liu, Elizabeth Hurley, Cedric The Entertainer, DeRay Davis, Nicollette Sheridan, Niecy Nash, Callum Keith Rennie, Mark Dacascos, Kevin McNulty, Will Patton
Screenplay by: George Gallo
Production Design by: Douglas Higgins
Cinematography by: David Franco
Film Editing by: Michael Matzdorff
Costume Design by: Jenni Gullett
Set Decoration by: Shirley Inget
Art Direction by: Ross Dempster
Music by: George S. Clinton
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, crude humor and some violence.
Distributed by: New Line Cinema
Release Date: January 5, 2007

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