Skyscraper movie review & film summary (2018)
But writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber has attempted the problematic combination of making you feel good about bravery and resilience while also making you feel nothing about the countless bodies that get blown to bits in a hail of automatic gunfire. Many, many people die needlessly in this PG-13 spectacle in the name of thrills, maybe? Character development? The international cadre of criminals who take over a Hong Kong high-rise – the tallest structure in the world, three times the size of the Empire State Building – are clearly, singularly bad. Having them burst into people’s offices and obliterate them entirely—while the camera steers away from the bloodshed, per MPAA guidelines—feels gratuitous.
You’re not here to think, though. You’re here to have fun, and “Skyscraper” does indeed provide that in its many dizzying and death-defying action sequences. It’s the connective tissue between the daring stunts that’s flimsy.
But first: a flashback to 10 years ago. Johnson’s Will Sawyer is a highly trained Marine and FBI agent who’s in charge of a hostage negotiation that goes horribly wrong (another instance of placing characters in the midst of jarring, over-the-top violence). Having lost his left leg below the knee in that explosive incident, Will now serves as a security consultant. His latest job has taken him, his wife, Sarah (Neve Campbell), and their twins (McKenna Grace and Noah Cottrell) to Hong Kong, where he must analyze the safety of The Pearl before it opens. A shining, self-contained city, stretching 200-plus stories into the clouds, it’s the brainchild of billionaire Zhao Long Ji (Chin Han). Characters stand around and provide painfully clunky expository dialogue, all of which will matter at some point later, detailing the building’s many high-tech features.
Not for long, though. Thurber isn’t terribly interested in steadily building tension. “Skyscraper” kicks into gear pretty quickly and remains relentless. A team of villains, led by the menacing Kores Botha (Roland Moller), has broken in with highly flammable chemicals in order to steal the most McGuffiny of McGuffins. (They shouldn’t even have bothered explaining it, the item in question is so disproportionately insignificant compared to the mayhem it causes.) But when they torch the joint, they don’t realize that Will’s wife and kids are still inside one of the residential units. And as the flames rise higher and higher from what began as a thin, orange line on the 96th floor, the danger and the insanity climb with them.
