Skyscraper Review.

Skyscraper

Rock Bottom.

Can you smell what the Rock is cooking? Well if you’ve seen any of his action movies in his filmography you’ll know exactly what he’s cooking. The Brahma Bull has been cooking popcorn movies for years now. If you’ve seen San Andreas you’ve seen this movie. If you seen Rampage a few months ago you’ve seen this movie. Hell, I can even tell you that his Big Trouble in Little China reboot is a film you’ve seen even before its been made. Dwayne Johnson has been churning out mediocre action movies by the bucketload for the entirety of his acting career but especially since he blew up in Fast Five (Not literally but with those movies who knows?). The thing with these movies though is that The Rock has been the best part of all of these movies. His films are always dragged down by dreadful dialogue, drab bad guys and action sequences that are mind bogglingly stupid. Now I’m a huge fan of The Rock but it becomes jarring to sit through these films when there’s at least two every year. Even knowing that I was about to see his version of Die Hard meets a Towering Inferno I knew exactly what I was going into. To say that my expectations were right would be an understatement.

Skyscraper follows the story of amputee War veteran Will Sawyer who oversees the security of the biggest skyscraper in the world but when the building is set on fire and captured by terrorists it’s up to the framed hero to save his Wife and kids from the looming threats. Now considering that’s the shortest I could give a summary of the plot shows how confused the film is. The film wants to be a family friendly Die Hard but that’s a ludicrous ambition. Die Hard is the best action movie of all time for a reason. It’s violent, sweary and pulse racing. Die Hard doesn’t allow itself to be bogged down by family friendliness. Everything about the family represented is cliched because of course one of his kid’s inhaler runs out.  Neve Campbell and Dwayne Johnson have zero chemistry on screen, not for a second did I believe they were married. Thankfully Campbell had her fair share of action scenes and wasn’t relegated to the damsel in distress. The kids were pretty solid and not irritating, Mckenna Roberts and Noah Cotrell were decent as Johnsons pebbles. The Sawyers are an incredibly forgettable family who you won’t remember anytime soon.

John McClaine is the hero that everyone believes that they can be. Will Sawyer on the other hand is superman.  It’s hard to get behind a character when he’s unstoppable, at no point do you ever feel that he’s in danger due unlike McClaine in Die Hard. For a movie like this you need an everyman and that’s just not possible with The Rock. The stunts that he pulls off are crazy. Johnson makes a 20-foot jump off a crane into a building look like a simple hurdle. This scene in particular was mind blowing. The slow motion made the stunt even more ridiculous than it had any right to be. Johnson as usual gives a charismatic performance but even he knows what kind of movie this is, right before he scales the Skyscraper using duct tape he says, “This is stupid.” and my god was he right. There’s been a lot of debate about the decision for his character to be an amputee. Some people find it offensive that The Rock called for more disabled actors in films while taking away a nob opportunity from them. While others have praised his decision to show that you can be a hero even with disabilities. Personally, I found that his performance wasn’t offensive as it was played seriously and showed some of the challenges that amputees face daily, such as their medication cycle. Johnson gets some laughs and chances to show off his physicality in fight scenes but the more ambitious (to say the least) set pieces are too far fetched to ever take seriously. I just want to thank this movie for teaching me that duct tape works as a bandage for gaping cuts.

Director Rawson Marshall Thurber is the man behind Dodgeball, We’re the Millers and Central Intelligence. The action comedies for the most part relied on the comedy aspects more than the action so to see him completely breakaway from the comedy into full out action is an ambitious move. I respect the mans decision to take a shot at something new, but it just doesn’t work. The plot is so messy that even after dwelling on it I’m still not sure what most of the characters motivations are. The villain played by Roland Moller is as stereotypical bad guy as they come. There is no insight into who he is at all and I can’t even give you hint at what his name is.  The only good thing about is that he gets to drop the films F bomb in a wonderfully splendid manor. Zhao Long Zi, the man in charge of tower, is a walking version of Mr Monopoly.  The China backdrop really fuels the movie, it’s one of my favourite things about it. It’s refreshing to see a disaster movie that isn’t set in America.  I also enjoyed the cops in the movie I felt that they added something when they occasionally came onscreen, to be honest I’m really scraping the barrel to find positives about this film.

Overall Skyscraper is one of the worst films I’ve seen this year. There’s no getting around it.  The ending is so idiotic that when it was hinted to at the films beginning I was thought to myself that there was no way they’d go down that route, I was wrong. Surprisingly, the film takes itself way too seriously with more melodrama than your average Grey’s Anatomy episode. I found Rampage to be the superior of The Rocks two movies this year, not even by that much. I’m beginning to worry about him as most of his recent films that haven’t been ensemble movies like Jumanji and The Fast and Furious haven’t been great. I think that Hollywood might be expecting a little too much from Johnson as even with all his talent it’s hard to elevate nonsense material. Johnson , who has just been revealed to be the highest paid actor of all time, may need to stop saying yes to every script because sooner or later his fans are going to bail on these subpar action flicks. My advice for Skyscraper is too either watch it with a couple of beers with your friends or better yet just watch Die Hard.

Liam’s summary of Skyscraper

Best moment: The Rock jumping 20 feet from a crane to the Skyscraper.

Worst moment: The Rock jumping 20 feet from a crane to the Skyscraper.

Best character: Will Sawyer for his superhero abilities which provided some entertainment no matter how stupid it was.

Worst character: Google has informed me that his name is Mr Pierce, he’s as awkward, Hugh Grantish as they come but evil.

Overall Rating: 2/5