‘SKYSCRAPER’ SERVES UP SUMMERTIME FUN
‘Skyscraper’ is a thriller with terrific visual effects
The Rock of ages ago has become Dwayne Johnson, dignified leading man, currently wrestling with a towering inferno in Hong Kong singlehandedly, as well as single-footedly.
As Will Sawyer, leader of a crack FBI hostage-rescue team, his operation goes awry in the tense opening sequence: He escapes with his life but without much of his leg.
He does, however, gain a fine wife in Sarah (Neve Campbell), the ex-military medic who nurses him back to health. Cut to 10 years later, and we find them enjoying an idyllic domestic life with their cute twins, as Will prepares for a new big-time job as a “Skyscraper” security analyst.
It’s a tall order — 220 stories, to be exact — called The Pearl, built by Chinese billionaire tycoon Zhao Long Ji (Chin Han) and billed as the tallest, safest building in the world. The astonishingly graceful tower is shaped rather like a twisted cruller doughnut, with Ji’s pearlshaped penthouse on top. State-of-the-art everything: futuristic gyro-elevators, 100-story waterfall and gardens, solid titanium doors and
floors. Totally fireproof, of course.
Just like the Titanic was totally sink-proof.
Nefarious members of a crime syndicate are out to sabotage the place, and arson is their terrifying weapon of choice. A fire starts on the 96th floor. No problem. Easily contained. Everybody below that evacuates safely. Only Ji lives above, on top, and he’s got his own private helicopter for such emergencies. The only other tenants above the fire line — for dubious reasons — are Will’s wife and kids. But the bad guys have framed him for the blaze, and he’s a wanted man on the run.
Now, a Rock-solid father will go to great lengths — and heights — to save his family. But Will has to simultaneously dodge the cops, unravel the conspiracy and clear his name while rescuing his loved ones (and maybe Ji) before they all become post-toasties.
Writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber (who made the successful “Dodgeball” in 2004 and the unsuccessful “Mysteries of Pittsburgh” in 2008) borrows from — or is it a homage to? — “Die Hard” (1988), where Bruce Willis was a cop trapped in a Los Angeles high-rise taken over by terrorists holding his wife et al. hostages. Here, there’s something similarly sinister about Hong Kong and something similarly incompetent about the police.
And are the Kowloon firefighters on strike? They can accurately be described as last responders to the crisis.
But there’s never a dull moment as ingenious Will climbs a 100-story crane, steers it to crash into the Pearl, makes impossible acrobatic leaps, walks the planks through the flaming rain of debris, and arrives everywhere just in the nicotine. His mano-a-mano battles are incredibly violent fistfights of the old western movie kind, with the firepower left largely to the fire. Nobody bleeds very much, except from obligatory cuts above the eyebrows, but there’s enough smashing and bashing to satisfy Joe Bob Briggs’ old drive-in movie kill quotient.
Sound and visual effects are terrific, I must say. So is the final rooftop set piece featuring Ji’s myriad disappearing mirror-panels — inspired by the famous funhouse mirror finale of Orson Welles’ “Lady From Shanghai” (1947) and Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon” (1973).
Mr. Johnson is surprisingly likable — and effective — for his low-key style and delivery, with a minimum of macho posing, preening and wisecracking. With his powerful 6-foot-5 stature and physique he is a kind of literal action figure, but thankfully not a superhero. Did you know he graduated from Freedom High School in Bethlehem, Pa.? I thought not. Did you know his 2016 earnings of $64.5 million made him the highest paid actor for that year? Did you know he was Tim Burton’s second choice for the role of Willy Wonka in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” after Johnny Depp?
Ms. Campbell is nicely believable without being hysterical. The two kids (McKenna Roberts and Noah Cottrell) keep the cutes to a minimum. Even the villains are refreshingly lowkey — slimey insurance man Pierce (Noah Taylor), henchman Botha (Roland Møller) and sexy Asian assassin Xia (Hannah Quinlivan).
There’s an occasional laugh or two, notably in Will’s desperate effort to make himself stick to the window ledges he’s trying to climb: “If you can’t fix it with duct tape … you’re not using enough duct tape.”
Silly but satisfactory summer fun.