Starring Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han, Roland Møller

Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber

Skyscraper lacks any real depth, but Dwayne Johnson will still keep you gripped at the edge of your seat for one hour and forty nine minutes.

If there’s one thing that Dwayne Johnson is good at playing, it’s characters like Will Sawyer. A stereotypical hard man who’s also a big softie for his family, in this particular incarnation Johnson is an ex-FBI agent, US military veteran and amputee with a prosthetic leg. Set in modern day Hong Kong Skyscraper sees Johnson’s character set out to rescue his family stuck inside the newly completed ‘world’s tallest building’ as they’re trapped above floors that have been set ablaze. Unfortunately, the fire is the only clear villain for the most part.

With several different potential main protagonists introduced at the beginning of the movie it can at times be confusing as to who’s really in charge and what their motivation is. It’s not until much later in the movie where the lead bad guy and his reasons for wanting to cause destruction are actually revealed, and as this isn’t one of those movies that’s builds up to or is meant to have the ‘mysterious bad guy’ reveal, when it comes it’s more of an anti-climax than something exciting.

Instead of having Will Sawyer leaping into action straight away, which the movie came across as very eager to do from the beginning, it would’ve been nice to have something that even thinly resembles a plot explained to the audience. Not only that, the opening scene set in the past then jumps to the modern day, leaving a lot of holes to be filled as to what’s happened in all those years in between, seeing as Will’s life has drastically changed in the interim. I still wasn’t completely sure, after the credits had rolled, what his job is in the modern day after the events that lead to the end of his former career in this opening. The characters, especially Will’s family consisting of a young set of twins, one boy and one girl and an ex-military doctor wife, are hollow, lacking in any depth and are basically superficial representations of a ‘perfect’ family. There’s no chance for the audience to connect with them, and consequently it’s hard to sympathise with them throughout the movie even when they are faced with life-endangering situations.

The stunts are great, albeit unbelievable, but then again that’s something that every action movie has to have. Having said that, just like Will’s audience in the movie, who went through the motions of gasping and cheering every time Will did something that should have left him for dead, I found it hard not to become emotionally invested every time he put his life on the line, whether it was hijacking a crane or scaling around the side of a building well over one hundred stories up.

Verdict: The plot is predictable and lazy, but it doesn’t take much concentration to watch, and all in all it’s an enjoyable and easy movie to sit through if you like the ‘good guy always wins’ trope. And despite its shortcomings in many areas, it’s difficult not to fall in love with and root for Dwayne Johnson’s latest take on the ‘hero trope’ 7/10

Paige Elliott