"Skyscraper" Review

Die Hard - Bruce Willis + The Rock - good villain + The Towering Inferno + great VFX = Skyscraper.

Any questions?

It's really that simple. 30 years after the seminal action classic that made Bruce Willis a star and spawned countless "Die Hard on a [fill in blank]" imitators set on a bus (Speed) or a plane (Passenger 57) or a battleship (Under Siege), the premise of a guy facing down an overwhelming threat gets rehashed with the Biggest Movie Star in the World (literally and figuratively) fighting to save his family in the world's tallest CGI building in Hong Kong (because China is where Hollyweird panders to these days) that's on fire!

Rock "The John" Dwayneson stars as security analyst hired to independently evaluate the safety and security of The Pearl, a 3500-foot-tall, 220-story megatower featuring state-of-the-art everything, self-powered by wind turbines, an indoor park and waterfall and a crazy virtual reality top level which makes no practical sense, but is obviously there for a climax ripped off from Orson Welle's The Lady from Shanghai. (It's not a spoiler when it's so clearly telegraphed by everything in the setup.) 

Things are looking fine except for the offsite control center inspection (because they didn't have room in a 220-story building for a control room?) and Rock and his former squadmate who set him up with the job are in transit when they're mugged in an attempt to steal the plot's biggest stupid thing, a tablet with Ultimate Total Control Over Everything in the building - let's call it the "iMcGuffinPad" - which will allow the bad guys to shut off the fire suppression systems and allow them to set the 96th floor on fire. Unfortunately, Rock's family (wife Neve Campbell, daughter McKenna Roberts, and son Noah Cottrell) are staying in a suite on the 98th floor and are trapped when the place goes up. Hijinks ensue.

Since it's clearly ripping off paying homage to Die Hard, you can't help but match up the categories to see how Skyscraper fundamentally doesn't get what made the former a classic. The biggest difference is in the respective stars: Willis was a schluby Everyman, a NYPD cop caught literally barefoot and outgunned who ended up a sweaty, dirty, bloody pulp by movie's end. The Rock is, well, The Rock, and he looks like an invulnerable superhero already, so they give him a salt-and-pepper beard and a missing leg to try and even the odds, but all the lumbering and getting beaten don't seem to hurt him much.

As for other comparisons, the villains suck even by lame action movie standards. Granted, Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber is one of the all-time great movie baddies, but several of the other gang members were also memorable like Alexander Gudanov's enraged blonde with the dope assault rifle and wise-cracking nerd Theo cackling, "And the quarterback is toast!" Skyscaper's hodge podge of villains aren't interesting or compelling, boiling down to the most generic descriptors like "Euro Baddie" and "Asian Ruby Rose" and the other McGuffin is so lame as to make the whole endeavor ludicrous.

Finally, despite being written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber - best known for comedies like Dodgeball and We're The Millers - it is weirdly lacking in sorely needed self-aware humor. Other than one moment when Rock is about to embark on a crazy set piece and mutters, "This is stupid," the script barely has anything which would elevate the material above rote meathead actioner level. Die Hard had John McClane constantly commenting on what was happening, speaking for the audience. For some reason Skyscraper decided that a missing leg was all the humanizing the Rock needed, wasting his ace comedic chops. Seriously, Dwayne Johnson is a greatly underestimated actor due to his massive physique, but look over his IMDB and the range of roles and note how he always seems to know what kind of movie he's making and delivers a precisely calibrated performance.

But while being derivative as all get out and inferior in almost every way, Skyscraper is still a decent popcorn muncher flick suitable for getting out of a hot summer day into an air-conditioned theater. The VFX of the tower and fire are quite convincing and the action set pieces, even when they're simply ridiculous and cribbed from other movies - the wind turbine scene is Galaxy Quest meets Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - are clearly and effectively staged. They're fun enough, but it's disappointing that they couldn't spice up the script with a little fire, too.

Score: 7/10. Catch a matinee.