Checked out Dwayne Johnson’s new action flick Skyscraper. I’ll just get it out of the way early… this is Die Hard meets The Towering Inferno… only without the all-star cast (it has Johnson and Neve Campbell… and a number of Chinese actors who may be big in their country).
Skyscraper stars Johnson as an ex-FBI field agent turned security expert who has been hired to analyze the safety of the world’s tallest building in Hong Kong. The building’s upper residential floors aren’t open to the public yet – only his family are living there – when a gang of criminals break in and set fire to those upper floors. Can Johnson get back into the building and rescue his family… and stop the criminals, I guess?
This is a big dumb movie that is fun enough to still recommend. It’s loud and impractical and the criminal’s plan is remarkably dumb and impractical. But you kind of have to leave logic and reason at the door… if you don’t, nothing will escape your sharp, analytical mind. Because nothing sharp or analytical went into the development of this flick. That means it has to survive on whether the spectacle is good, the cliffhanging moments are believable enough, and whether the action is good.
Most of these checkboxes can be checked. The action is good enough… some of its a little shaky-cam early on but when they get away from the fisticuffs, it gets a lot better. The cliffhanging is sometimes very good and suspenseful. And the movie looks good…. maybe the occasionally obvious blue-screen but it generally works well enough.
Johnson’s wife (Neva Campbell) was a navy surgeon with three tours overseas… so when she gets to be on screen doing active stuff, she’s competent and capable. I’d rather have followed her more since, you know, Dwayne Johnson is The Rock and you can always rely on his being the big damn hero. And he is basically a superhero.
So, there ya go. I suspect if you wanted to see this movie based on the silly trailers, you were going to see it anyway. I wouldn’t want to try to convince anti-Rock people or those who saw the trailer and yawned… this won’t change your mind. It’s a big silly bit of spectacle that’ll honestly be forgotten in a year. Or six months. Or a couple days. But it’s entertaining enough while it lasts.
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