Skyscraper (12A) ★★★☆☆
HOLLYWOOD seems to be on some sort of mission to chuck as many seemingly insurmountable obstacles at Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as it can: catastrophic environmental disasters (San Andreas), monster-sized creatures (Rampage) and now the world’s tallest building set aflame. His might is truly tested in this enjoyably over-the-top summer treat that pleasingly embraces its inherent ridiculousness.
Johnson plays Will Sawyer, a former US Marine and FBI hostage rescue team leader who, 10 years after an incident that left him with an artificial left leg, has settled down to raise a family while working as a high-tech security adviser for skyscrapers across the world.
We find him on assignment at The Pearl, the partially-opened (fictional) world’s tallest building located in Hong Kong and the brainchild of enigmatic businessman Zhao Long Ji (Chin Han), where Sawyer’s family is also being safely housed. Or so he thinks …
While he’s off site checking the remote security system, the building is attacked by terrorists who purposefully set the 240-storey building on fire from the 96th floor upwards, leaving Sawyer’s wife Sarah (Neve Campbell) and children Georgia (McKenna Roberts) and Henry (Noah Cottrell) trapped.
With time running out, Sawyer goes to whatever lengths he can to save his family while figuring out what exactly the attackers want.
As blockbusters go, it’s as humongous in scale as you’re likely to get and there’s an undeniable spectacle in seeing one of Hollywood’s biggest stars play the hero by scaling a mile-high structure. Needless to say 1970s disaster classic The Towering Inferno is a key inspirational touchstone.
Director Rawson Marshall Thurber spreads his large-scale action wings by delivering well-judged set-pieces that lay on the sense of acrophobic peril with a trowel, while at the same time injecting enough self-aware humour – brought forward his previous films like Dodgeball and Central Intelligence – to make sure it never takes itself too seriously.
The concentration is very much on the spectacle and the heroics, which leaves plotting and characterisation a little on the pedestrian side. It also contains some pretty on-the-nose dialogue and convenient twists of fate.
It’s pretty basic stuff; heroic family man must do whatever he can to save his loved ones from near-certain death, while a generic group of terrorists, led by a European villain-for-hire (played with pantomime ruthlessness by Danish export Roland Moller), try to steal something from within the skyscraper. Stop me if you’ve heard this Die Hard one before.
But the brash title and unrelentingly extreme aesthetic shout from the rooftops that it’s not a film particularly interested in nuance.
Johnson is tremendous value as always, a one-of-a-kind Hollywood action star and one of the very few who could sell the “believability” of such an over-the-top display as well as be convincing as a sincere family man.
There are genuine gasp-worthy moments as he tries to leap into and over the fiery chasms of the building being destroyed around him.
And the film has some enjoyably high-tech tricks up its sleeve, foreshadowed in the first act before being utilised to creative effect as events really come to a head. It’s gargantuan, it’s loud and unashamedly bombastic blockbuster spectacle which smashes you subtlety in the face and will make you want to cheer because of it.
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