Skyscraper

Dir: Rawson Marshall Thurber

2018

***

Skyscraper is a fairly derivative action film, a cross between Die Hard and The Towering Inferno but not quite as good as either. It’s a b-movie with better special effects than you’d expect from such a film but with a sub-standard script and a very silly ending. The question is: is Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson charming enough to save it? The answer is yes, he is, it’s what he does best. As action films go it is pretty solid, sure it ticks all the usual cliché boxes: Forgirgn bad guys, muscular hero, defiance of the laws of gravity, ridiculous examples of technology that don’t exist, local police force not acting like a local police force would etc, but I don’t think anyone really thought the film would be anything different and honestly, who cares? Action films are about escapism. While the film could have been a hundred times better, I don’t think they could have picked a better lead actor. Seriously, action stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone and Vin Diesel have all made great films but they’ve also made stinkers – films that even they couldn’t save. I’m not sure that is possible for Dwayne Johnson. He is the ultimate action star because you can’t help but like him. It is natural to cheer for Schwarzenegger while he’s fighting the Predator and you will have sympathy for Rambo in First Blood but it’s only in films like Total Recall and Rocky that you really like their characters. Bruce Willis was dubbed the ‘new action hero’ with Die Hard because he wasn’t as muscular and he was witty but no action hero has been quite as lovable as Johnson. He’s bigger than all the others, fitter than them and, in all honesty, a better actor. I want to touch him and be his friend. So when he races into a burning Skyscraper to save his family, I believe he is racing into a burning Skyscraper to save his family, I just wish he was running in there to save me. This is Rawson Marshall Thurber’s first venture into action films, although there was a fair bit of action in Central Intelligence – again staring Dwayne Johnson. I have to say it’s not bad for a director who had only worked on comedies to this point, it’s very much a b-movie but I think that’s a positive rather than a negative. The character development is slight but it is strong enough to aid the viewer read between the lines. We first see Johnson’s character Will Sawyer in a scene from the past when he was a FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader. Things go bad, his team is half-killed and he loses a leg. In the hospital we see a nurse looking over him, telling him he’ll be okay. Fast-forward ten years and Sawyer is now married to his nurse (Neve Campbell) and working as a security surveyor in his own firm. Sawyer is tasked with inspecting the Pearl, the world's tallest skyscraper standing at 3,500 feet (1,100 m) and 240 stories tall in the centre of Hong Kong. The job was offered to him from a friend and ex-FBI agent who was with him on their fateful last mission. High level financier Zhao Jong Li has financed the construction and is relieved, but not surprised, when Sawyer confirms the building’s fire and security systems are secure. Sawyer is then sent to an offsite security centre, while his family are given free tickets to the zoo. When Sawyer’s bag is snatched on route to the offsite security centre, he is relieved that he kept his security key in his jacket. His friend Ben becomes somewhat dejected and it becomes clear that he was just a pawn in something bad that is about to happen. He and Ben end up fighting until Ben is killed, to make matters worse, Sawyer’s family didn’t make it to the Zoo due to his son’s asthma flaring up. When the middle level catches on fire, Sawyer knows something is up and races back to the tower to try and save them, entering halfway up from a adjoining crane. Unbeknownst to Sawyar and his family, halfway through the construction process, rival gangsters under the control of bad guy Kores Botha, an international terrorist with ties to many major crime syndicates, decided to use their control of construction crews working on the skyscraper to extort millions of dollars in shakedown payments for preventing a massive strike of construction workers, potentially halting its progress. Zhao agreed to the shakedown amounts, but not without carefully tracking and recording Botha's international money laundering scheme in his attempt to "legitimize" the funds he has extorted. Zhao believes that the memory card he has created containing the money laundering tracking information on Botha will provide him with insurance against any attempt by Botha to extort money from them a second time. Botha learns of the existence of the memory card and makes it a personal priority to retrieve it in order to destroy it and the incriminating information it contains - because his bosses will kill him if he doesn’t. He could have been super-covert about it but instead he decides to cut off the top of the tower with fire and base-jump off it once he gets the card. Easier said than done. Luckily his wife was an army nurse and so has combat training and can kick butt when she needs to. She and their son manage to escape, leaving Sawyer to save their daughter who ends up being held at ransom. He gets the girl and kills the baddie but not before one of the film’s lower moments. The Skyscraper is a cool building and when engulfed in flames it provides our hero with many challenges but for some reason a ridiculous house of mirrors scenes is added for the film’s climax. One would think being a mile in the air would provide enough adventure and plenty of scenarios for an action film, but for what ever reason, a scenario involving CGI reflective panels was green-lit and the grand finale ends up being a poor mans version of the last scene from The Man With the Golden Gun. It’s a mindless action film that gets a little more mindless as it goes on but it’s fine, Johnson prevails. I do think it would have been better if Jaimie Alexander had been cast instead of Neve Campbell (Campbell just beat her to it) and it did have one action scene too few but the story was actually well thought out and I loved that the day is saved by someone with a disability. It’s no masterpiece but I would argue that it is a film that is pretty hard to hate.