More a one-man movie industry than an actor, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has wrestled the disaster flick from Roland Emmerich’s clammy hands. Barely has the dust settled on his last round of carnage and he’s already back in business. And like all major business, it takes place in Hong Kong.
Last seen fist-bumping a gorilla in Rampage, The Rock (played here by The Rock) goes from King Kong to Hong Kong and rescues his family from the tallest, “safest” and most on-fire building in the world. And he does it with only one leg. Go Dwayne ‘The Sock’ Johnson!
Skyscraper is indistinguishable from all of his films (it even uses the last line from San Andreas) but there are some well-directed set pieces, even if the script is a load of Hong Kong hooey. After all, you can’t spell ‘Skyscraper‘ without ‘crap’.
Any potential in the Die Hard-meets-Towering Inferno premise is squandered by the barrel-scraping screenplay, and all the actors (including Scream‘s Neve Campbell and A Hijacking‘s Roland Møller) respond by phoning it in so hard they could have called it Skypescraper.
More interested in pandering to China (best place for a panda) than making any sense, Skyscraper meets The Rock’s teeth-and-testosterone quota with more aplomb than Rampage. Not exactly lofty ambitions, but look where those get you.