Let’s see the sights.
Followers will notice this is the second Rock movie I watched recently. The Rock has a charm that allows him to make bad movies better. While Rampage was a pile of shit, Skyscraper is at least competent.
We follow The Rock after he is injured in a standoff at a hostage situation (yes, his character has a name, but this is more amusing to me). The injury causes him to lose a leg, and here we have our first weird plot point. Him not having one of his legs doesn’t matter to the plot. It seems that this was only done to set up a couple of stunts later where he will use the prosthetic as a tool.
While the leg is a small example, a lot of this film is built around set-pieces that will appear later. We have some traditional echoes—where a theme will reemerge, but they went too far over the top here. Too much of the film was set up in preparation for later stuff.
So what’s the plot? The Rock is a security exec who is hired by the builder of the tallest building in the world. He says its safe, but then terrorists come in and it isn’t safe!! Now Rock must save his family before they are burned alive. What about the safety system? Well, the bad guys hacked that (oh shit!). After lighting a fire to trap to owner in the top floor (and Rock’s family) he must now fight his way through the firestorm to save the day.
The action segments are competent (though not exciting). Things move along fine here. I would describe this movie as a store-brand Die Hard and not much more than that. We have a dumb, but competent action film. Little more and little less. Decent special effects and some well-timed humor keep the film going. This is a good one to watch when you want to turn your brain off.
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