Review: Skyscraper Fails To Reach Die Hard's Heights
- Jul 12, 2018
- 2 min read
Do you like seeing people jumping, hanging and falling from high thing? Do you Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson? Do you like action? I give to thee, Skyscraper.
Will Sawyer (Johnson), an ex-FBI agent now working for Zhao Long Ji (Chin Han), a Chinese billionaire constructing a building like no other. The Pearl is 220 floors of living spaces, parks, shopping centres and entertainment. Sawyer's job is to evaluate The Pearl's security systems, and he finds them satisfactory. There's just one thing, building safety systems don't often plan for terrorist incursions. When the mysterious Kores Botha (Roland Moller) attacks, setting fire to the 96th floor, Sawyer finds himself trapped outside, his family trapped on the 98th floor, and the fire steadily rising.
Comparison's to Die Hard are inevitable. A balding lawman battles international terrorists while searching a tall building for his family. At one point they hand from the opening left by a window they intentionally shattered to get inside. The 'terrorists' are actually thieves. The big difference is Die Hard will be remembered. While Skyscraper isn't awful, it is the big, dumb entertainment that exists as a one and done and continues to maintain Dwayne Johnson's career. He himself is serviceable, though he will likely never be known for his acting prowess. He's done good work in the past, but not in the big budget blockbusters his name has become synonymous with.
The action is pretty solid, albeit somewhat derivative. You got your perilous jumps, your shootouts, some fist fights and a mirror battle straight out of John WIck 2. There's also a great sense of verticality surrounding many of the more building infused scenes, ones that often lead to some genuine thrills. It's not super original, but it is pretty fun.
Perhaps his biggest problem is the undying dedication to the idea of family. Whether it is cultural, personal, or something else, the man seems to go out of his way to establish relationships within his movies. Be it Fast And Furious, Rampage, or anything else he's done, it always holds him back. Visually, Johnson is not a family man, he's a Schwarzenegger, and he needs to embrace. As enjoyable as Skyscraper is, the family scenes are of very little value. I, and probably everyone else, came to see Johnson kicking ass and taking names. When he's doing that, it's good, really good. But when he's playing the protective father it's not just bad, it's boring.
Skyscraper is big dumb action movie number I've lost count of 2018, and it won't be the last. And much like every other one, you can take it or leave it, with no consequence to yourself.
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