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SKYSCRAPER
***
Dir: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell
(USA, 12A, 1hr 42 mins)
It’s the Towering Inferno meets Die Hard in this ludicrous, derivative but enjoyable action film with Dwayne Johnson on leaping about duty, but this time…he has a prosthetic leg!
Johnson plays Will Sawyer, a former FBI hostage negotiator who lost his leg in a mission gone wrong. He’s brought in as a security consultant on a new building in Hong Kong, The Pearl. It’s almost a mile high, with it’s own park, shopping centre and goodness knows what else. Johnson has some hard facts to offer about the building’s safety from attack.
He and his wife, Neve Campbell and kids are given a free pass in the building, but before he knows it, the building is on fire, he’s being framed for setting it ablaze and his wife and kids are trapped on the top floor while dastardly terrorists run amok. Johnson finds himself climbing a super crane to jump into a skyscraper that is on fire to save his family whilst corrupt executives and ineffectual misguided cops do nothing.
This does exactly what you’d expect it to, with the likeable Johnson still an unstoppable force of nature even with his prosthetic leg, which provides a few show stopping moments of it’s own. It’s cheesily predictable, but it knows what it is. Director Thurber keeps his tongue firmly in his cheek throughout, the wisecracks are forced, Campbell provides some bite as Johnson’s resourceful wife. This is passing nonsense, ripping off what came before, a B-movie writ large with none of the violent edge of Die Hard and no real jeopardy for man-mountain Johnson. It’s still entertaining however and seems to be a niche Johnson has completely carved for himself. A muscleman who can act and with a winning self deprecation, he makes Skyscraper an enjoyable couple of hours of fiery fluff.
words Keiron Self
Out on 12 Jul