Skyscraper

Do you like Die Hard? Do you like Assault on Precinct 13? Skyscraper is like those just without the humour, brain or soul. Skyscraper is a film about a group of criminals who start a fire in a Skyscraper, so they can steal back a list of names, that threatens to expose their crime syndicate; and of course, Will Sawyer, (Dwayne Johnson), and his family gets caught in the thick of it. Does that sound ridiculous to you? Well, it should because Skyscraper is without a doubt the dumbest film of 2018. Things start off badly and get worse, the first act is a mess of contrived overplayed backstory, and hollow characters. Chief among these is Ben, (Pablo Schreiber), who is not even a character, more a poorly disguised plot device; being laughably underused then killed off. Then, the criminals decide to frame Sawyer, for no real reason, this combined with the fact that they have set the entire Skyscraper on fire to try and steal a USB drive, leaves you groaning and asking why. Those are just a few examples of the stupidest and perhaps even the worst script of 2018. Then you have the blatant product placement throughout the film which is downright offensive, think last years Power Rangers was product placement too far, well let me tell you this is a worse example. The characters, for the most part, are shallow, underdeveloped and ultimately frustrating. Characters such as Sarah Sawyer, (Neve Campbell), make decisions no one else would make in that situation, she leaves the Skyscraper with her son with no mention, not even one, about her daughter. However, the films one positive comes from its leads, Johnson and Campbell both give great performances, though the latter is given very little to work with, they also both have a great deal of chemistry together. Johnson is playing Johnson, just like always, but that isn’t a bad thing at least not if you like The Rocks usual work, he sells the right amount of emotion to make the moments feel more than they should do, considering the poor writing. There are other positives too such as some impressive visual effects sequences, the mirror sequences in the pearl itself look beautiful. However, this is offset by some very lacking choreography at times, such as the fight sequence that happens in the back of a police car between Sarah and Xia, (Hannah Quinlivan), in which the action is barely even visible. Overall, this film feels incredibly dated, if it had come out in the 1990’s or early 2000’s it would be right at home, but in 2018 with many other better blockbusters coming out, it comes across as soulless and hollow. Skyscraper chooses spectacle over everything else, and it loses for it. The script issues, laughably weak characters, rip off nature and a whole host of other issues stop me from being able to recommend this one.
1.5/5
Reviewed by Luke