Renny Harlin is stuck in the 90's (spoilers)
This movie came out 10-15 years too late. It had all the components and feel of a movie that would have been more successful if it had been made in the 90's. But even in the 90's, that movie would have been blown out of the water by the likes of Se7en (modern side of the 90's) or Silence of the Lambs ("vintage" side of the 90's).
Elementary plot, foreseeable twists, linear story-telling, cartoonish characters etc, not to mention all the usual tropes, corrupt cops, seemingly less suspectable individual turns out to be the bad dude, hot hopeless widow turns out to be not-so-innocent etc.
Another thing that also bothered me is that the whole intro with the voice-over explaining to the viewers the job of a cleaner in a somewhat humorous way, this whole scene that is repeated at the end, has no real significance whatsoever within the story itself; it seems more like a pretense to add a fake layer of ingenuity and sophistication to a movie that failed to explain the relevance of it. It is a rather basic cop-partner-betrayal story which didn't need the "cleaner" dimension and meticulous job description to work. Seems very artificial to me.
Not to mention, we are supposed to believe Ed Harris has no clue that in the middle of his living room there's some trophy with the very last name of the murder victim and the exact name of the victim's widow written in black on it? Oh, ok. And instead of asking for help the one guy he helped kill the murderer of his wife, the guy who's not only the only person in the universe who almost has a moral obligation to help him without asking questions but who is also the father of his goddaughter, his long-time partner, he decides to pull off some bizarre scheme that makes no sense to begin with.
At any rate: 4/10, not lower just because i love Ed Harris and Jackson, even if the latter seems to appear in every POS movie the solar system has produced in the last 10 years, not far from a Bruce Willis or even a Nicholas Cage.
People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefsī²