Skyscraper
starring Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han, Roland Møller, Noah Taylor, Byron Mann, Pablo Schreiber and Hannah Quinlivan
written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber
Rating: ♦♦◊◊◊
Dwayne Johnson plays ex-U.S. military and FBI man Will Sawyer who, after his retirement, now works as a private security consultant. In Skyscraper, Will is reviewing security for the world’s tallest skyscraper (225-storeys) in Hong Kong, nicknamed “The Pearl,” built by Chinese billionaire tech entrepreneur Zhao Long (Chin Han). The lower half of the tower is commercial. The upper half is residential, but it’s not occupied yet because of problems insuring it. But Sawyer’s family is allowed to occupy an apartment there while Will is working.
Then along comes some criminal types led by Scandinavian terrorist kingpin Kores Botha, played by Danish criminal-turned-actor Roland Møller. Møller’s crew is sort of like Hans Gruber’s gang of thieves in Die Hard (1988), only different. Møller is about high-tech, high-stakes international extortion and murder, whereas Gruber was only about high-tech robbery and murder.
The Pearl is set on fire. I thought it was going to be like The Towering Inferno (1974), but it wasn’t. This fire is not accidental, it’s deliberate. It’s part of a diabolical plan to turn The Pearl into a multi-billion-dollar chimney, sort of like the Grenfell Tower fire in London, England in 2017. Will returns to the site after being out in the city for the day and finds it alight, with his family trapped inside. This always happens in the movies - instead of letting the police and fire services do their jobs, the hero goes in himself to make it alright. Luckily, he succeeds (without a plan). Will climbs up the building like Spiderman, finds his family, kills the bad guys, and even though the whole thing is on fire, his wife still manages to reboot and reactivate the offline fire suppression system and stop the inferno.
Even though this is a movie I still felt extremely uncomfortable watching Will clamber around a skyscraper 200-floors in the air. That’s even more than Ethan Hunt in his Impossible missions. If you’re afraid of heights you might want to give Skyscraper a miss.
My favorite line is when Will is patching a shrapnel wound in his shoulder by binding it with duct tape:
If you can’t fix it with duct tape,
then you ain’t using enough duct tape.
Right on! That’s what I’ve been telling people for years.
Roland Møller seems to be an interesting character. Like Danny Trejo in the U.S., he’s a convicted criminal who found rehabilitation through acting. After reading about him I realized that I’d already seen him in a couple other films. His biography does not endear him to me. I like Danny Trejo, though, because not only is he not above parodying himself, he seems to enjoy it.