SKYSCRAPER (2018) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

SKYSCRAPER (2018) movie

Genre              |   Action

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   102 minutes

Released         |   12 July 2018

cast

​Dwayne Johnson ... Will Ford
Pablo Schreiber
Neve Campbell ... Sarah Sawyer
Byron Mann
Kevin Rankin ... Ray

director

​Rawson Marshall Thurber

writer

​Rawson Marshall Thurber

cinematographer

​​Robert Elswit

music

​​Steve Jablonsky

film editor

​Michael L. Sale

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box office result

Worldwide               $? million

Australia                 $? million

North America        $? million

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the best dialogue

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SKYSCRAPER (2018) MOVIE IMAGES

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SKYSCRAPER (2018) STORY SYNOPSIS

​Global icon Dwayne Johnson leads the cast of Legendary’s Skyscraper as former FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader and U.S. war veteran Will Sawyer, who now assesses security for skyscrapers.  On assignment in China he finds the tallest, safest building in the world suddenly ablaze, and he’s been framed for it.  A wanted man on the run, Will must find those responsible, clear his name and somehow rescue his family who is trapped inside the building...above the fire line. 

SKYSCRAPER (2018) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 12 July 2018
Pop ​Movee Rating ⭐⭐½

SKYSCRAPER is the ultimate throwback genre mash-up, mixing liberal doses of 1970s “Disaster” movies like THE TOWERING INFERNO & THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE with 1980s American “Action” epics like DIE HARD with a dash of Asian Cop dramas like POLICE STORY and A BETTER TOMORROW…

Dwayne Johnson stars as Will Sawyer, a former soldier and FBI hostage response officer who finds himself on the wrong end of a bomb vest at the beginning of the movie… Jump forward ten years and Sawyer has the opportunity to establish himself as a genuine player in the Security analysis field, providing a final report on the safety of ‘The Pearl’, the world’s newest, much vaunted, tallest building. Much has changed for Sawyer. For starters, he married Neve Campbell’s Sarah, the surgeon who helped put him back together after the explosion that blew off one of his legs and left other parts of him badly burned and injured as a result of the bomb at the beginning of the film. The story picks up in Hong Kong, where Will and Sarah, along with their two kids Georgia - McKenna Roberts - and Henry - Noah Cottrell - have been staying as guests of ‘The Pearl’s’ owner Zhao Long Ji, played by Chin Han. 

The expository affirmation of the building’s “World Class” security and safety systems early in the film rolls off like a checklist of anything that can go wrong will go wrong!

Automatic fire suppression system - check!
Independently controlled Penthouse - check!
Advanced security facial recognition software - check!
Remote off-site management control room - check!

The list goes on…

They’re all very necessary ingredients to have in place for the mayhem that unfolds over the next eighty odd minutes. Rawson Marshall Thurber, SKYSCRAPER’S Writer & Director, has, up until recently, been better known for his Comedy movies such as DODGEBALL and WE’RE THE MILLERS. His 2016 movie CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE, starring Johnson and Kevin Hart, was a solid blend of Comedy and Action and was reminiscent of duo team-ups from decades past, conjuring images of Eddie Murphy & Nick Nolte and Jackie Chan & Chris Tucker. While Johnson & Hart were more Comedy than Action, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE was far better than anticipated and the announcement that Thurber would work with Johnson on SKYSCRAPER seemed like a natural progression. 

There’s no doubt Thurber has a very solid grasp of the genres he’s emulating with his new film..

Reason One - The nostalgia of “Disaster” movies...

Before the “Disaster” movie sub-genre became the medium through which “End-of-World” films found form, the stories were far more contained and, generally, concerned themselves with A-list movie stars playing glamourous characters trapped in situations where escape seemed all but impossible.

As far as most obvious comparisons go, the general public will, more than likely, associate SKYSCRAPER with John Guillermin’s 1974 movie THE TOWERING INFERNO, starring Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Fred Astaire, Richard Chamberlain, Susan Blakely, Robert Vaughan and Robert Wagner! Oh, my God; what a cast! 

On the surface, SKYSCRAPER has a very similar premise. Unlike THE TOWERING INFERNO, Thurber’s movie is not a two hour and forty-five minute epic with the Who’s Who of Hollywood. It’s a 102 minute piece of escapist entertainment that is part of the push to move beyond North American audiences and capture the global movie-going market.

In addition to THE TOWERING INFERNO, Thurber’s story also pays homage to many of the other 1970s “Disaster” movies…

AIRPORT (1970) with Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jacqueline Bisset and George Kennedy.
THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972) with Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine and Shelley Winters.
EARTHQUAKE (1974) with Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner and George Kennedy.
AIRPORT 1975 (1974) with Charlton Heston, George Kennedy and Gloria Swanson.
THE HINDENBURG (1975) with George C. Scott, Anne Bancroft and Burgess Meredith.
THE CASSANDRA CROSSING (1976) with Sophia Loren, Richard Harris and Ava Gardner.

Don’t forget these ones;

SKYJACKED (1972), ROLLERCOASTER (1977), AVALANCHE (1978), BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1979), THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979) and METEOR (1979).

SKYSCRAPER takes its cues from all of these films, containing its mayhem largely to the confines of ‘The Pearl’. Given the abundance of material present within the “Disaster” sub-genre, Thurber could have stopped there and still delivered a high stakes melodrama...

However, that would discount the presence Johnson, who, over the last ten years, has developed into  of one of world cinema’s most reliable performers. 

Reason Two - Dwayne Johnson and the “Die Hard” factor...

Once upon a time, Johnson could have been tagged as a contemporary version of Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both of those performers have had, on the balance of things, great careers, but both will be forever associated with roles that were as much about their braun as anything else that may have contributed to their success. Johnson, who is still referred to by many as his wrestling alter-ego “The Rock”, has worked hard not to fall into the category of pure braun. Each time he’s reached a certain level of critical or commercial success, he’s subsequently diversified and taken on roles that have stretched his cognitive skills as much as his physical prowess. Stallone and Schwarzenegger were both a lot further along in the screen careers before they came to appreciate the need for diversity.

That’s why SKYSCRAPER seems to be more like DIE HARD than anything else in terms of comparative Action fare.

DIE HARD became an Action benchmark because it was about an ordinary Police Detective up against a group of would-be terrorists. The premise seemed almost plausible and Bruce Willis was entirely relatable as John McClane. He wasn’t a muscle-bound, Kung-Fu expert. He was human. He wasn’t indestructible. He just wanted to save his wife in an effort to save his marriage and salvage his family.

Johnson’s Will Sawyer is not John McClane. He’s not even close, but Thurber & Johnson do an okay job at least attempting to make him seem humane. He’s war veteran. He’s an amputee (by way of the film’s prologue). He’s a dedicated husband and he loves his kids. 

Where SKYSCRAPER misses the point is in making Sawyer almost indestructible.

Yes, he bleeds, but it’s not the same as John McClane.

When McClane pulls the glass out of his foot in DIE HARD, the audience feels it. It hurts and Willis shows it.

When Sawyer pulls a shard of metal out of his shoulder in SKYSCRAPER it’s not the same. Johnson gets a throw away line about needing more duct tape. 

SKYSCRAPER was part the way there, but the small moments of Johnson glibness don’t resonate in the same way that a great Action movie like DIE HARD does.

Reason Two-and-a-half -  The continued emergence of international entertainment...

The many and varied parties associated with the production of SKYSCRAPER appreciate the film’s audience is much broader than the North American movie market.

Yes, Dwayne Johnson and Neve Campbell are American performers, but this is about as much consolation SKYSCRAPER pays to that market. Johnson, no doubt, will be a drawcard; as he was for RAMPAGE earlier in the year. The appeal for the producers of SKYSCRAPER is the overseas audience Johnson has developed during the last five or so years, much like Schwarzenegger did in the 1980s and 1990s and Tom Cruise has done over the last two decades. With a large international audience, a film’s North American box office result becomes part of an overall strategy for success; not the be all and end all.

Once upon a time, Legendary Entertainment was run by Thomas Tull, a genuine business disruptor, whose ability to put together finance and talent saw him become one of Hollywood’s most powerful players. However, much like Keyser Soze, Tull disappeared after he sold his Legendary Entertainment to China’s Dalian Wanda Group for $3.5 billion in 2016. 

Dalian Wanda’s ownership has been fraught with challenges as the Executive team in charge of the Legendary business have struggled to put together the same sorts of deals that were a hallmark of Tull’s ownership of the company. 

A movie such as SKYSCRAPER would suggest a turnaround of sorts is underway at Legendary Entertainment. The company won a competitive bidding war from a host of traditional Hollywood studios such as Universal, Sony and Paramount to secure the project back in May 2016, paying a reported $3 million just for Thurber’s script. It’s easy to see why this Chinese owned company was so keen to win the rights...

The film is set in Hong Kong and  affords the appearance features of Asian actors. The presence of these performers will be viewed as favourably by Asian audiences as Johnson is in the North American market by audiences there.

The Verdict...

The biggest disappointment of SKYSCRAPER is the truncated feel of the story.

The film abounds with set-pieces, but the story never feels as fully developed as it should be. The plot is convoluted and lacks a strong villain for Johnson to square off against. Thurber and Film Editors Julian Clarke & Michael Sale opt to cut-away from the action when a longer scene would have been far more effective. There’s a real sense that the film’s editing process took the opportunity to deliver a relatively sanitised version of events to help increase the film’s overall appeal, especially to younger viewers. Effort is made to downplay the film’s violent acts, despite the central antagonist being a machine-gun toting enforcer for powerful crime syndicates who endorse burning down the world’s tallest building as a means to an end.

SKYSCRAPER is not a disaster but it’s definitely not a Classic “Disaster” movie either. Johnson does what he needs to do to get the job done and, with the exception of Chin Han’s superior performance, everything else tends to fall in around Johnson’s performance. Other than Han, only Pablo Schreiber, as Sawyer’s old FBI colleague Ben, has the ability to match it with the film’s lead, but his is a only a brief performance. 

Johnson’s fans will love SKYSCRAPER, but, for those not as enamoured with him, Thurber’s film will feel derivative and draw attention to the fact that much of what is on offer has been done before and done better.

SKYSCRAPER (2018) USEFUL LINKS

​Skyscraper (2018) - IMDb
​Skyscraper (2018 film) - Wikipedia
​Skyscraper (2018) - Rotten Tomatoes

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