Time: 102 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence
Cast:
Dwayne Johnson as Will Sawyer
Neve Campbell as Sarah Sawyer
Chin Han as Zhao Long Ji
Roland Møller as Kores Botha
Pablo Schreiber as Ben
Noah Taylor as Mr. Pierce
Hannah Quinlivan as Xia
Matt O’Leary as Skinny Hacker
Byron Mann as Inspector Wu
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber

Former FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader and U.S. war veteran Will Ford (Dwayne Johnson) now assesses security for skyscrapers. He’s on assignment in China when he finds the tallest, safest building in the world suddenly ablaze, and he’s been framed for it. A wanted man on the run, Will must find those responsible, clear his name and somehow rescue his family, which is trapped inside the building, above the fire line.

I wasn’t expecting much from Skyscraper. I like Dwayne Johnson and I enjoy some of his action movies but they aren’t that great and Dwayne Johnson just feels like he’s playing the same character over and over again. I was expecting another simple and dumb action flick like San Andreas. However, Skyscraper was actually pretty decent, it was entertaining, it was good for what it was, and Dwayne Johnson was once again effortlessly solid in his role.

With Skyscraper being quite similar with Dwayne Johnson’s other action movies, I didn’t pay attention to the physics at all. So I wasn’t really taken out of the movie at all when some stupid and implausible things happened, like some other Dwayne Johnson movies like San Andreas (even though I knew what kind of movie it was). It’s silly but not too silly that it’s distracting. There are some exposition dumps about the setup and it felt a little lazy at times, but its very early on and it’s not that much of a problem really. Speaking of the setup, I really liked the idea about a tall building in Hong Kong and how the DJ is stuck there, it’s got a somewhat similar setup to Die Hard. However I feel like the movie doesn’t utilise enough things as it should’ve with the setup of the tallest building in the world. To be fair though, there are a couple of sequences which do take advantage of the setup. The movie is an hour and 40 minutes long and it’s pretty well paced. After the first 15 minutes, this movie moves at a fast and constant rate. I was rather entertained throughout and I had a good time with it.

Many people say that Dwayne Johnson keeps playing the same character, and I’m one of those people. However I think he’s a good actor and he is good at what he does, he just needs to branch out and try different roles to show that he has range. Johnson plays another similar character here again but once again he’s good at it, he’s likable, effortlessly entertaining and is good in the action scenes. His wife played by Neve Campbell is also pretty good, one thing that I like is that she actually does some things, she’s not just a damsel in distress who needs constant rescuing. Other actors like Chin Han who plays the owner of the building are pretty good in their roles. The terrorists characters are very underwhelming, one dimensional and just aren’t good. They work well enough for the plot but they are distracting and a lesser aspect of the movie.

Director Rawson Marshall Thurber is surprisingly more of a comedic director, with DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, We’re the Millers and Central Intellegience. I have to say he did a pretty good job with directing an action movie (and a less comedic movie) for the first time. The fights scenes are good and aren’t edited choppily, you can see what’s going on. Even the CGI is pretty good, not amazing but not bad like you might expect it to be.

Skyscraper won’t be ranked among the best action movies in recent years, or even this year, but for what it is, it’s good. It’s fast paced, you’re never bored, it’s very entertaining and Dwayne Johnson is as usual good. The flaws that it has weren’t enough to bring down the enjoyment I had with this movie. So if you are willing to watch a fun but implausible flick, Skyscraper is for you.