Skyscraper

The following is a review of Skyscraper. I'd come up with a more imaginative introduction than that, but the film couldn't be bothered, so why should I?

The Partially Educated Review

Turns out it is possible for a film to be generic in an aggressive kind of way; as if to leave you affronted by it's very averageness. I left a recent of Skyscraper feeling as though I'd been beaten about the head with a baseball bat made entirely of mediocrity. Honestly, I may have spent the rest of the day in complete despondency had it not been for the excitement of the Chinese that followed it.

Skyscraper is never a bad film. It's just one that's quite clearly designed to pull punters in for yet more of Dwayne Johnson's action frolics. That in itself would be fine if it weren't for the fact that we're dealing with serious Dwayne; the one that bored us through the likes of Faster and Snitch. Johnson isn't meant to be serious and films always die when he's in that mode. At least with the aforementioned two, the subject matter dictated it. Here though, there really isn't any excuse for the barren wasteland of humour we're presented with when the concept would call for one-liners galore.

The plot is rudimentary. Johnson plays Will Sawyer; a security advisor on the largest skyscraper in existence. When terrorists take over it and set fire to the bajillionth floor, not only is he framed for this, but must also find a way to save his family in the penthouse suite.

Within the first 5 minutes, Johnson survives an explosion of such close proximity that it should by rights have made the walls into a Jackson Pollock made entirely of his innards, but instead he just loses a leg. Honestly, they could have called the character Manfred Manimal McMannfromuncle and they'd have still been underplaying the manliness.

Perhaps that would have yielded some interest to the film; an obvious vulnerability would be something that I can't recall Johnson playing before. Instead, it becomes a source for set-pieces or one of the film's annoyingly few jokes. Outside of that, he's still just The Rock.

Surely it's not just Dwayne though. There must be other things to discuss, but there really isn't. The villains are all generic terrorist types of varying European descent. The cops on the outside all display the sort of investigative intuition that you'd expect from a hedgehog taking an up close peek at a nearby motorway. His family are presented as a nice family that you definitely want to see survive and boast our only other recognisable presence in Neve Campbell (though some would potentially recognise Noah Taylor as well if it weren't for the fact that he doesn't stop gurning).

It's not that Skyscraper is an entirely negative film. Some well-shot sequences may genuinely put the shivers into vertigo sufferers. While I'm not one of those, I do have a slightly weird affliction where I get pins and needles in my left foot when I see someone come perilously close to dropping from a great height. It's safe to say that same foot hurt a little after this film. You don't create that without some competence, but director Rawson Marshall Thurber demonstrates little ability for creating any sort of action surprises. I'd say he should stick to comedy, but honestly, the guy's been coasting off the fact he made Dodgeball for far too long now. Still though, worth a reminder...

In the end, Skyscraper feels like the sort of film that would be created for the textbook How To Write An Action Film. If they came up with something great, they wouldn't use it for the textbook. So why did they commit the entirely ordinary idea to film?

FOUR out of 10