Skyscraper will be a movie that more cynical movie writers will point to as a prime example for the state of movies in 2018. The movie takes pieces of other films, sets itself in China, hires a bankable movie star, and trades stellar story for explosions and action. Wait, nevermind. Skyscraper isn’t a sequel. Wait, check that. It’s a lazy Die Hard sequel. So yes, perfect example.
After a traumatic intro, we meet Will Sawyer (Dwayne Johnson), prosthetic leg in tow, in Hong Kong. He is conducting a security analysis of the tallest building in the world, designed by architect Zhao (Chin Han) who lives on the 200th floor. To conduct his analysis, Will moved onto the 98th floor of the building with his wife Sarah (Neve Campbell) and their two kids (McKenna Roberts and Noah Cottrell). Zhao has some secrets he’s holding onto, which lead to his building being set ablaze by mercenary Kores Botha (Roland Moller), leaving Sarah and the rest of Will’s family trapped in the increasingly engulfed skyscraper.
The action and explosions are the only thing keeping Skyscraper from being unwatchable. The movie makes great use of its kickass heroine, Neve Campbell. Even though there’s only between 3% and 5% of a character written, Campbell gets to beat the crap out of a henchman, walk across a plank over a fire pit carrying a kid around her neck, and beat the crap out of an assassin about to execute a police officer. On a chart, Neve has probably 40% of the action in the movie, and because it’s usually unexpected, it comes across very satisfying. The Rock does his thing here, though if you’ve seen the trailer you pretty much saw most of the great stuff, especially the use of that prosthetic leg. The third act left me wanting a bit. They set up this great update of the Hall of Mirrors in Enter the Dragon, but the way it is staged, it’s hard to tell who has the upper hand ever. Also, with all the fire on this skyscraper, I needed that building to come down and the Rock to parachute down to where his wife was. That would have been incredible.
But that’s the other, more frustrating part of Skyscraper: laziness. The premise takes the surface of other, better movies: Die Hard, Towering Inferno, Enter the Dragon, The Raid. A fine enough pastiche, I guess. But what goes underneath that? That’s right, a poorly written family drama. Other than the boy child having asthma, the kids are terribly interchangeable, so much so that the movie goes to the “kid is in trouble” well twice! But do the kids help their dad? Do we learn anything about them? Nope, zilch. We also need to pander to China even more than the Hong Kong setting, so we’re introduced to at least 5 or 6 peripheral characters who get too much screen time to not learn more about them. It’s an offensive monetary decision. This decision to add in this “serious” police investigation makes Skyscraper probably more somber that it should be: this movie should have been dumb crazy fun like The Accountant or The Rock’s other franchise. Or dive headfirst into a Fugitive style intense action procedural. Skyscraper tries to do both, and by not committing, pulls off neither well.
Skyscraper had the potential to be edge of your seat summer blockbuster fun. Instead, it takes the easy road, ending up at something passable, but very, very forgettable. If the skyscraper scale is the Burj Khalifa on one end and Demi Lovato’s Skyscraper on the other, Skyscraper the movie is gonna try rising from the ground, but inevitably, get bored of trying and just chill.