Skyscraper
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Writer: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han , Roland Møller, Noah Taylor, Byron Mann, Pablo Schreiber, McKenna Roberts, Noah Cottrell, Hannah Quinlivan, Kevin Rankin
Seen on: 12.7.2018

Plot:
Will Sawyer (Dwayne Johnson) used to work for the FBI and he is a veteran, but now he leads a calmer life, assessing the security of skyscrapers. His last assignment brought him, his wife Sarah (Neve Campbell) and their children( McKenna Roberts, Noah Cottrell) to Hongkong to inspect the world’s tallest building – The Pearl. A passion project of Zhao Long Ji (Chin Han), the building boasts everything you could possibly hope for on a staggering 225 floors. But just as Sawyer is about to clear the building, fire breaks out. Sawyer’s family is trapped inside and Sawyer himself is blamed. He now only has a very limited time to save them, clear his own name and find out who is trying to gain from the fire.

Skyscraper keeps its promises, as I have come to expect from Dwayne Johnson movies: that is, it’s a fun action movie with a decent amount of explosions and quips that sets out to entertain and it does.

The film is definitely not free of sins. Above all there’s the fact that Will Sawyer lost a leg in a previous mission, meaning that we get yet another film that is perfectly content with cripping up: having abled (or at least two-legged) Dwayne Johnson play a disabled man and thus taking a chance from a disabled actor to play the star of a major action movie. This is especially disappointing because they actually use the disability and the prosthesis really nicely in the film. I can only imagine that a one-legged actor would have reveled in this.

The film does a little better with the women in it who are competent and nicely fleshed out characters. Of course, it doesn’t go too far, doesn’t feature too many of them and doesn’t actually give any of them a leading role. But it was nice to get those seconds-in-command. (And it’s always nice to see Neve Campbell.)

While it would be nice to get an action film that works well with any kind of character who isn’t a cishet man, I have learned to definitely not expect it (at least we get a man of color as the lead here). What I did expect was exciting action and entertainment – and on that count the film definitely delivers.

If you have issues with heights, the film is bound to raise your heartrate a couple of times and you might have to push through that. But if you’re looking for a decent action film and can stand the heights, you’ll be in for a good time with this one.

Summarizing: Entertaining.