Cleanskin 2012

Harry, Sam Douglas is a British arms dealer whose morning begins with a cigarette and danger: he’s in bed with a prostitute named Rena, Shivani Ghai. His bodyguard, Ewan, Sean Bean, is suddenly thrust into a high-stakes grind when they travel to a bank carrying a briefcase packed with Semtex. The duo are shadowed by two terrorists, Ash, Abhin Galeya, and Paul, Tariq Jordan. In a brutal turn, Ash incapacitates Ewan, Harry is killed, and the briefcase vanishes. Ewan fights back, wounding Ash before he loses consciousness, setting in motion a covert chase that will pull them all into a murky world of off-the-books operations and double-crosses.

Soon after, the mission takes on an unorthodox shape: Ewan is ordered by his SIS superiors, Charlotte Rampling as Charlotte and James Fox as Scott, to hunt down the bomb-makers outside the normal channels. He’s paired with rookie agent Mark, Tom Burke, and their work becomes a dangerous puzzle of disguises, misdirection, and half-truths. The trail leads to Rena, whom Ewan and Mark interrogate to extract what little information she has. She explains that a man she knew, Paul, paid for information about Harry and supplied him with a gun—details that push the investigation toward Paul’s residence. The attempt to capture him ends badly: Paul kills Rena and is himself killed by Ewan, but not before the danger they’ve unleashed starts to circle closer.

In a London cafe, Ash spots Kate, Ash’s former lover from university, and they exchange numbers. The film then bleeds into a series of fragments that reveal Ash’s past: six years earlier, Ash and Kate were a couple while they studied law. At university, Nabil—an ardent extremist who leads a pro‑Muslim student group—befriends Ash and pulls him toward a radical cause. Ash and his friend Yussif join the group, absorbing Nabil’s anti‑Western rhetoric. Kate’s infidelity with Nick strains Ash’s trust and drives him away, redirecting his energy toward the cause. The flashbacks escalate into tragedy as Ash and Yussif participate in the murder of a former soldier, Conlan; the Conlan family suffers as well.

Back in the present, Ewan and Mark invade an abandoned building believed to house a terrorist. Ewan interrogates the captive, who begs for mercy, but the interrogation ends with the man being burned alive. A grim reminder of the undercover nature of their work, Ewan strips the jacket of the dead man and pockets it as they push forward toward a city housing estate. There, Ash and another man in a bulky jacket spot them; a chase ensues. Mark shoots an unknown man who tries to flee, and the pair are warned by Charlotte that the SIS is aware of their covert mission—and are now hunting them. The tension spikes when Mark breaks into a hotel room later, attempting to kill Ewan, only to be killed in the confrontation. Isolated, Ewan resolves to finish the terror cell before he himself is killed, tapping into Mark’s earpiece to learn that Mark’s allies are orchestrating the next bombing.

Ash makes his way to Kate again and carries out a chilling assignment: Nabil tasks him with murdering the head of a pro‑Iraq War think tank at his daughter’s wedding in London. Ash records a video to justify his planned suicide attack, then moves through the wedding reception with deadly precision. He is confronted by Ewan in a brutal fight, and though both are wounded, Ash eludes capture briefly. Disguised as a waiter, he makes his way to the head table, but is eventually shot dead by Ewan. With the detonator disabled, Ewan exits the hotel only to notice men in suits delivering luggage on a trolley into the lobby; moments later, a bomb concealed in that luggage detonates, killing the targets of Nabil’s plan.

The epilogue brings a dark, meticulously planned reveal. Ewan discovers a safe deposit box key inside the jacket of the man he killed earlier and uncovers a folder and a video camera. The footage identifies Hussein Malik, an undercover SIS agent, and Ewan pieces together that Charlotte engineered Malik’s death, an attempt to assassinate him, and the framing of Scott as corrupt to obscure her own machinations. The truth boils over when Ewan confronts Charlotte with a lighter at her countryside mansion and kills her, framing her death as a suicide in a final act of calculated justice.

As the dust settles, the film leaves a scar of doubt and consequence. The path of vengeance has peeled back the veneer of official duty, exposing a web of secrets that stitched together personal and political codes with deadly precision. The characters each move through a maze of loyalties, betrayals, and the lingering question of who truly holds the power when the rules of engagement are rewritten in the language of smoke and mirrors.