Cleaner Movie 2025 Ending Explained, Noah's Secret Backstory Revealed by Director & Taz Skylar (Exclusive)

Cleaner director Martin Campbell and star Taz Skylar (who plays Noah, the key antagonist of the movie) spoke with The Direct in exclusive interviews where they helped break down the ending of the action-packed hostage negotiation movie. 

Cleaner Movie Ending Explained By Director Martin Campbell

Noah Meets His Fate and the Rich Confess in Exciting and Satisfying Ending

Towards the end of Act 1 of Cleaner, it's revealed that Taz Skylar's Noah, Joey's (Daisy Ridley's Joey) former co-worker and friend, is a violent, radicalized activist hoping to make the CEO and rich people they've taken hostage, confess to their crimes.

Noah's passion for his goals burns so bright that he even kills Clive Owen's Marcus, the former leader of the entire operation. When Noah takes over, however, the situation inside the skyscraper gets even more dire.

• The Direct: "In the end, you know, Noah does eventually lose not long after it's revealed that he's going to kill everyone in the building anyways. Can you explain where you feel his unraveling began, and what truly spelled his doom, like, what moment truly [got him there]?"

Martin Campbell: When the coup d'etat basically happens, right? And he's essentially, you know, he's become the Elon Musk of Trump, hasn't he? He's suddenly now in a position where he can fulfill the crazy anti-humanist agenda if you see what I mean. [He's] prepared to die. [He] absolutely believes in that philosophy and is prepared to kill everybody in order to achieve it.

And yes, he himself will die, but that's the point. Of course, there'll be a huge publicity then, the message will be loud and clear. So, I think once he's actually starting to take control, once he's got rid of [Clive Owen's Marcus], I think where that it sort of sets in.

Thankfully, Noah, who is revealed to be anti-humanist, isn't successful with his real twisted plan: blowing up the building and everyone inside of it no matter how everything plays out.

Instead of everyone dying, Joey is able to successfully best Noah and kill him by creatively throwing him out of a window. While all the hostages survive (save the first CEO, who died earlier in the film), their confessions are still recorded—though not immediately shared.

Instead, Joey and her brother Michael (played by Matthew Tuck) keep the drive, keeping it out of police hands, in order to disseminate the confessions later.

• The Direct: "While the CEO and kind of corporate folk [who are confessing throughout the movie] don't die at the end. Would you say it still doesn't work out for them?"

Martin Campbell: I think all of [those confessions are] on the [drive that] Daisy managed to hide and keep I think it's all there. I think all that evidence is there. And I think they all go to the wall basically, don't they? You know what? I mean, all the confessions are there. They've been downloaded. So, I mean, and if they're publicized, then [they're] all out of a job, aren't they?

• The Direct: "I thought that Noah was a great name to have for someone who is anti-humanist, especially kind of on a biblical level. Noah is known for saving humanity by, saving the animals and letting everyone else get wiped out in the process for a reset. Was that connection purposeful?"

Martin Campbell: I think it was, by the writer... You know, anti-humanist means that you get, and, by the way, there is an anti-humanist group, I don't know if you know that, it exist? I mean, crazily enough, it exists, you know. But I think [writer] Simon [Uttley] probably had that mind, to be honest.

• The Direct: "At the end of the day, when audiences are walking out of this movie, what do you want them to take away from it?"

Martin Campbell: Just having been thoroughly entertained, nothing more.

Cleaner Star Taz Campbell on Noah's Secret Backstory

"It Was the Loss of Elena That Kind Of Pushed Him Past the Point of No Return..."

• The Direct: "Noah has an intense confidence to be able to basic, just kill the previous leadership, take over the whole operation. Can you describe how that confidence took root and how he got to that point where he was like, All right, well, this is my operation, now we're doing it my way?"

Taz Campbell: I think, so there's one little detail that we worked on when we were trying to—so I had this hair pretty much when I met Martin, and when I started the film. And obviously, this wasn't going to work. And so we were trying to figure out what was going to be the thing that we gave him an identity with.

And everything on him, like every single tattoo, is pulled from something very specific of some culture in his backstory that we wrote together as a creative collective. And with the hair, I remember speaking to [director] Martin [Campbell] and to Simon [Uttley], who's the writer, who's a brilliant dude, and we saw this one video of an activist getting dragged by the hair down the street.

And just as an idea, I kind of pitched, okay, well, what about if everything that we put on him has to have a reason, then why don't we just shave his head? And, the reason is because then nobody could grab it and nobody can drag him down the street, and nobody can make him feel like that.

And we built in, you know, he has longer hair later on in the film. Well, what we built into the story is that thing of getting dragged down the street by his hair is something that's like perpetually happened, not in the same form, but that humiliation is something that's perpetually happened in his story for a long time, building up to this moment.

And there's one person who's mentioned the story, who isn't actually in the film, who is called Elena, who we had a tattoo of on his finger. And it's like a little Easter egg that most people probably won't even notice. And he has a little necklace that also had E on it. And it was the loss of Elena that kind of pushed him past the point of no return in order to take the action that he does with Marcus.

And even then, there's kind of like levels to which it escalates, because I don't think he fully went in, planning to come out without Marcus. I think he thought that was a possibility. And there was a world in which he arrived at the end of his story, which is essentially to just blow everything up without Marcus.

But I think there's a world in which he thought he could maybe bring him over to his side, and the point at which that becomes apparent that's not going to be the case. There's a very visceral choice there that has to happen for a young man. And it's almost kind of like Simba killing Mufasa, in a world where one is brought up, and the other has to make the decision to kill the person who's brought them up. That's a big decision. It's a big escalation.

And then once you've made that choice, once Simba has killed Mufasa, the wheels have just come off, and there's no stopping where the thing's gonna end up.

And then in terms of, for me as a guy trying to figure that out, or trying to, like, not look stupid doing that. I think I just grounded myself in as much logic and as much literature as I possibly could. I read not only manifestos but also a lot of biblical references. I read the bible cover to cover.

There's a lot of, like, anti-humanism [which can in] a lot of ways stem from a lot of, like, [Friedrich Nietzsche's] original writings that I read a bunch of books on cover to cover. There were so many things that I could find online through references that Simon Uttley, the writer, had given me that he had used to write the movie of different layouts of plans that different activist groups had already done and either failed at or succeeded at that I also read.

So, I just tried to ground myself in as much of that as possible. So, when it came to trying to represent somebody who was going to walk through every single obstacle in his path, I did so from the point of actually knowing why I was doing that

• The Direct: "Noah, was he ever truly friends with Joey, or was that a farce?"

Taz Campbell: I think he was. I think they were genuinely [friends], because there are two things. One, Joey was never meant to be there. And I think as much as he openly talks about wanting to kill everybody in the building with impunity, he never counted on Joey being there.

And when he does figure out that she is there, as much as she's not going to get in the way of what he wants to do. If he really felt indifferent, completely indifferent, towards her, the film would have ended a lot earlier than it did.

But he doesn't feel indifferent towards her, and she doesn't feel indifferent towards him, and that's why the characters make decisions that make things escalate to the points that they do, because they can't bring themselves to do the thing that Noah does to Clive [Owen's] character.

Both spoiler-filled conversations about Cleaner can be viewed here:

Cleaner is now playing in theaters worldwide.