'Skyscraper' Has Glimpses of Ambition, but Settles with Being Just Another Action Movie Starring The Rock

For a couple of years now, regardless of what the movie is about, I will go watch it as long as it stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.  I’ve been a huge fan of him since his wrestling days, and even though he’s basically playing the same kind of character in every movie, he’s reliably fun to watch – making the movie, which is usually dumb and derivative (and sometimes even otherwise crappy), very serviceable at the very least.

Hence, I knew what to expect from Skyscraper.  And it’s exactly the kind of movie I thought it would be – unremarkable but made entertaining enough by the Rock being the Rock.

As what the movie title suggests, its main setting is a skyscraper named “The Pearl”, which stands 225 stories tall – the world’s tallest building in this particular universe – and is highly state-of-the-art.  Hired to assess its fidelity is security expert Will Sawyer (The Rock), a former FBI agent whose last mission had left him without a left leg and now relies on a prosthetic to keep mobile.  While he is performing his duties, terrorists storm the massive building and set it ablaze, with the blame put on him.  With his family still trapped in the burning structure, he must somehow rescue them while being hunted by both cops and terrorists.

The futuristic nature of The Pearl provides an initial science fiction-y charm.  But its potentials aren’t truly explored.  They get lost within a tropes-driven, by-the-numbers action movie narrative.  Thus, the impression left is that of a movie with ambitions but has either decided along the way to play it safe or been unable to figure out how to execute properly.

It also doesn’t help that it takes itself a bit too seriously.  I think it would have been improved if it had been more self-aware and lighter in tone.

The action set pieces are somewhat cool.  Still, a large amount of their inherent appeal is discounted by the mere fact that something like Mission: Impossible – Fallout exists out there – an action movie were stunts are being performed for real.  The green screen magic in Skyscraper just can’t hold a candle.  Nevertheless, because of my big fear of heights, it made its “money shots” more thrilling to me than they really are.

Oh, one last thing.  It has this character named Xia (played by an actress named Hannah Quinlivan a.k.a. Kun Ling), and she’s like the blandest, most pretentious “badass female underling” I’ve ever seen in film.  Not hatin’, but I found her hilariously bad.

To sum it up, simply speaking, Skyscraper is just another Rock film.  And, again, that’s totally fine.  For the Rock has yet to lose his electrifying likability.