If you work or live in a high-rise building, you probably haven’t given much thought to the people who clean the windows from the outside. Or if you have, you might have wondered how they have the courage to perch on a small platform hundreds of feet above the ground. But you might want to give them another look. One of them might be the only thing preventing you from falling victim to a gang of terrorists.

At least, that’s the unlikely premise of the new action film directed by James Bond veteran Martin Campbell (GoldenEye, Casino Royale) and starring Daisy Ridley as Joey, a window cleaner who finds herself desperately battling a gang of eco-terrorists who have taken over an energy company building and taken some 300 hostages.

Yes, Joey is the latest in a long series of unlikely action movie heroes who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and fighting seemingly insurmountable odds to survive. Except unlike John McClane, she doesn’t have any memorable catchphrases.

She does have plenty of backstory, however, with screenwriter Simon Uttley establishing the character via opening scenes in which she oversleeps, rushes to a care center where her neurodivergent brother Michael (Matthew Tuck) is being kicked out, is forced to take him to work with her, and desperately attempts to get there before her domineering boss fires her. Throughout it all, Joey displays a ferocity and hair-trigger temper that later makes sense when we learn that she’s ex-military and had to quit after getting into a physical altercation with a male soldier.

Working late while Michael amuses himself in the building, Joey is forced into action when members of “Earth Revolution,” posing as masked dancers, take over the energy company’s gala with the aim of exposing their nefarious business practices and even the murder of an investigative journalist. But it soon becomes clear that the two leaders of the group have different aims. The older Marcus (Clive Owen) wants to raise public consciousness about the company’s misdeeds. The more extreme Noah (Taz Skylar) wants to shed blood. “We agreed, no killing,” Marcus reminds Noah after he murders one of the company’s executives by shoving a champagne bottle down his throat. The resulting argument doesn’t end well for Marcus.

It’s thus left to Joey, hanging helplessly outside the building, to thwart the attackers’ plans. She manages to send a blazing “SOS” message to alert the authorities, who initially suspect her of being one of the terrorists. But she eventually forms an alliance with a female police superintendent (Ruth Gemmell, Bridgerton) which provides the opportunity for them to engage in some friendly character-revealing conversation. Because when you’re in a life-and-death situation, you really want to talk about your personal life.

Director Campbell clearly knows his way around this sort of material, resulting in some tense, well-staged action sequences that make Cleaner reasonably diverting for its concise running time. But the film never achieves the heights of the classic actioners that clearly inspired it, and its overuse of familiar genre tropes (for once, can’t the main villain be uncharismatic, like so many in real life?) soon becomes wearisome. And fans of Clive Owen, once thought of as a potential James Bond, will be annoyed to find out how little screen time he has. Not to mention that his character receives an especially undignified exit.

Although Ridley tries her best and is certainly up to the physical demands of her role, she’s never fully convincing as the sort of badass who can take down a group of terrorists even while endlessly worrying about her brother. After her fine work in the recent Young Woman and the Sea, it’s disheartening to see her slumming in a B-action movie. Although to be fair, they are taking an awfully long time putting that next Star Wars film together.