Skyscraper
It seems that one of the few ways to explain Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s physique and capacity for getting things done in film (outside of making him a gym loving cocaine addict) is to say that he is/was in the military. Johnson’s characters have been in just about every kind special forces that screenwriters can think of, and the skills that he acquires there help him tremendously when he leaves or is forced out by injury. Such is the case in Skyscraper, Johnson’s 2nd film of the year and the 2nd film that he’s been in this year that includes destroying tall buildings (though this one does not feature an 80-foot gorilla). Like Rampage, Skyscraper is an attempt at making a blockbuster film with the sole intent to make as much money as possible. Unlike Rampage, Skyscraper is amusing enough to pull it off.
Skyscraper, written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and Central Intelligence), takes place entirely in Hong Kong right before the opening of the (fictional) tallest building the world has ever seen; The Pearl. Will Sawyer (Johnson) is a former FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader but after an unfortunate accident that caused him to lose his leg, he found a new calling assessing security for skyscrapers. After getting a job assessing The Pearl through FBI friend Ben (Pablo Schreiber), Will is given unlimited access to the building’s security system by the buildings designer and financer Zhao Long Ji (Chi Han) and his family (Neve Campbell, McKenna Roberts, and Noah Cottrell) are the first people to actually live in the building. When criminal mastermind Kores Botha (Roland Møller) decides to set the building on fire in order to get important information from Zhao, Will is tasked with getting to the top of the building in order to save his family.
Skyscraper is garnering a lot of obvious comparisons to Die Hard but with an attempt at bigger stakes. There are more people to save in a taller building and with only one leg for good measure. But the film never reaches the heights of Die Hardand mostly sticks to being dumb fun (whether that was its intention or not, I’m unsure). There isn’t a lot of plot here and what little there is isn’t very complicated though it does seem unnecessary. A lot of the film is just watching The Rock jumping from high places and nearly falling to his death and he does this so often that there are times that I forgot that he is supposed to only have one leg. Everything about this film is a little bit ridiculous, including the police force led by Inspector Wu (Byron Mann) and Chief Sheng (Tzi Ma) that they insert in every 5 minutes or so who do nothing really except guess at Will’s intention. They even add a redemption at the end where Will essentially gets to re-try the hostage attempt that took his leg though it doesn’t really go over how I expect they wanted it to.
In my review of Rampage, I ended by saying that I hoped that if Johnson was going to make bad films that he could at least make sure that they were fun again. With Skyscraper, Johnson seems to be doing just that. I had genuine fun watching the predictable dumbness unfold in Hong Kong as a very tall building burned to the ground. I can’t tell if Skyscraper takes itself seriously or not (there are some sections that feel overly dramatic but there are some moments where the words “this is stupid” are said aloud) but the film is an enjoyable 102 minutes packed with intense moments from beginning to end. (My hands were legitimately sweating because there are so many shots of the ground while Will hangs from a window.) The disaster movie seems to be a genre that Johnson wants to tackle more of as a San Andreas sequel is in the works now and if I’m being honest, I may go see it opening night.
I give it 2 ½ out of 5 trash cans.
