Our hero “is able to leap tall buildings in a single bound,” right? Uh, no, that’s another guy. In the 2018 action/disaster film, Skyscraper, our hero, Will Sawyer (Dwayne Johnson), can leap his way into the world’s tallest building, which happens to be on fire, while outrunning both the bad guys and the police—and he can do all this on only one leg. Well, what would you expect from a movie starring The Rock?
I’m a sucker for just about anything in which Johnson appears, and Skyscraper is no exception. Its Guilty Pleasure designation is warranted, as it underperformed at the box office and received a great big meh from the critics. But audiences—the folks who actually pay to go see these movies—gave it a nice B+ grade.
THE SKY IS THE LIMIT
With that rather mundane tagline, here is a brief overview of the film. Will Sawyer, an ex-Marine now serving on the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, loses a leg to a suicide bomber in a botched rescue attempt. (His prosthetic leg will prove useful during the later action; I’m not making this up.)
The Pearl is rather tall.
Fast forward ten years, where Will is now a security consultant. He has been hired to assess the security for “The Pearl,” the world’s tallest skyscraper, 225 floors towering over Hong Kong. This amazing edifice, nearly completed, is the pride and joy of gazillionaire Zhao Long Ji. Will’s family, wife Sarah (Neve Campbell), and twins Georgia and Henry, have accompanied him to Hong Kong and are staying in a residential apartment on the 96th floor.
Zhao has an enemy, of course, in a nasty guy named Kores Botha, whose team has infiltrated the building. Prior to their sabotaging the Pearl, Will has approved its internal security and is now headed out to inspect an offsite security center. Zhao has given him a tablet that allows Will total control over the Pearl’s systems. Before he reaches the facility he is attacked by Botha’s henchwoman, Xia, who is even nastier than her boss. Will manages to escape after she takes the tablet. Xia and her team kill everyone in the security center and use the tablet to hack into the Pearl, disabling the fire-extinguishing systems just as Botha sets fire to the 96th floor, sending Sarah and the twins fleeing for their lives.
Yes, he actually makes this jump.
So the stage is set for the bulk of the film. Will Sawyer, who is believed to be the perpetrator, is pursued by the authorities, his every move viewed by thousands in the streets and on television, as he attempts to enter the burning building to save his family. The stunts (and CGI) are outrageous, seriously over the top, but hey, aren’t we looking for escape when we go to see films like this? One reviewer called Skyscraper a “satisfying summer thriller,” and that sounds just perfect to me.