‘Skyscraper’ doesn’t need a fire to crumble

Posted on July 20, 2018

By MARK VIOLA

Here’s a bit of film trivia that I hadn’t realized until I read it a few days ago. “Skyscraper” is the only film to receive a major release this month that’s not a sequel or based on existing material. So far, we’ve received “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” “The First Purge” and “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation.” But, I’m talking about the entire month, because the rest of July offers “The Equalizer 2,” “Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!” “Unfriended: Dark Web,” “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” and “Teen Titans Go! To the Movies” (based on the popular Cartoon Network show).

Perhaps even more amazing than an entire month of sequels is the fact that “Skyscraper” manages to be less original than most of them — and less entertaining. The film, from writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber (“Central Intelligence,” “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story”) stars Dwayne Johnson (“Fate of the Furious”) as Will Sawyer, a former FBI agent who has been a freelance security consultant since one case went really bad — costing him his career and his leg.

Now, he and his family — including wife Sarah (Neve Campbell, “Scream”) and twins Georgia (McKenna Roberts, “The Young and the Restless”) and Henry (newcomer Noah Cottrell) — are in Hong Kong as he finishes his security inspection of the Pearl, the tallest building in the world and the brainchild of billionaire Zhoa Long Ji (Chin Han, “The Dark Knight”). Unfortunately, Zhoa has something some really nasty people want, so they set fire to the building in an attempt to smoke the billionaire out and steal whatever it is they want. Of course, they need a patsy, and Will fits the part.

If that description sounds a bit like “Towering Inferno” meets “Die Hard” with a tiny, superficial dash of “The Fugitive,” that’s because the movie is definitely pulling from those influences. Unfortunately, the script never delivers anything close to those films, instead relying on a series of predictable plot developments that pave the way for Johnson — as Will — to sneak into a blazing building, track down his family and take care of the bad guys along the way.

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