NOW SHOWING

MOVIE: Skyscraper STARRING: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Pablo Schreiber RATING: M SHOWING AT: Grand Central REVIEWER: Wenlei Ma 2.5/5

OF COURSE Skyscraper was never going to be more than a mindless blockbuster – there are no deep metaphors, what you see is what you get.

And what you get is one of the most ridiculous movies you’ll ever see.

This is a movie in which neither logic nor physics is a limitation. You will see Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson conquer all manner of jaw-dropping, gravity-defying stunts – hurling himself through the air, climbing up 100-plus storeys on a construction crane with nothing more than sheer force of will and those enormous hands. All the while, his character is an amputee with a prosthetic leg.

The story – because there is one and if nothing else, Skyscraper is surprisingly tightly plotted – follows Sawyer, a former Marine and FBI hostage rescuer, who has been hired to assess the security of the world’s tallest skyscraper, the fictional 220-storey The Pearl in Hong Kong.

Will declares it “Fort Knox a mile in the sky”. Any such proclamation guarantees someone will prove it’s not. Which happens about five minutes later when Will is drawn into a dastardly plot involving Hans Gruber stand-in Kores Botha (Roland Moller), the leader of a group of baddies that set off a deadly firestorm on the 96th floor and take over The Pearl.

Will’s family is trapped inside the building along with its owner Zhao (Chin Han) so the muscle man has to perform incredible, Ninja Warrior-times-ten feats of strength to rescue them and take down the terrorists.

Moments of brevity are few and far between. Skyscraper is far too earnest and saccharine, missing copious opportunities to poke fun at itself.

Not for nothing, you will not be bored as you try to game what outrageous thing our hero is going to try next.

Skyscraper is in cinemas now.