{"id":28513,"date":"2018-07-19T05:05:40","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T09:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=28513"},"modified":"2018-07-19T06:29:44","modified_gmt":"2018-07-19T10:29:44","slug":"skyscraper-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/19\/skyscraper-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Skyscraper (2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019m a big fan of Dwayne Johnson. What ever he\u2019s in, I\u2019m automatically going to watch no matter what as he packs a star quality that\u2019s been missing in movies for fifteen years. I guess with every action star, it\u2019s an oath they take that they must have their own \u201cDie Hard\u201d in their repertoire, and \u201cSkyscraper\u201d is that inevitable point in Dwayne Johnson\u2019s career as a big screen hero prone to playing men staring down impossible odds. I\u2019m sad to see that \u201cSkyscraper\u201d is about as bland and forgettable a vehicle as it gets, which is a shame since the premise has at least some potential to be quite an exciting twist on a creaky, worn formula turned sub-genre.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Johnson plays former FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader and U.S. war veteran Will Sawyer, who, after a disastrous hostage situation is rendered an amputee. After falling in love with his doctor and marrying her, he\u2019s now a family man and part time skyscraper\u2026 security\u2026 assesser\u2026 er<\/em><\/strong>? Anyway, he\u2019s contracted by a corporation to oversee the security for an immense skyscraper in China nicknamed \u201cThe Pearl.\u201d Things spiral out of control when Will\u2019s family visits the skyscraper, and are caught in a massive blaze in the building when it\u2019s ignited by a group of terrorists seeking crucial information. Now with Will hell bent on saving his family from certain death, he hopes to reach them before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n

Oddly enough \u201cSkyscraper\u201d aims for a broader (let\u2019s face it, exclusively international) audience appeal, so while it\u2019s definitely PG-13 there isn\u2019t much material here to warrant the rating. There\u2019s certainly gun fire and some heavy one on one fights, but mainly it\u2019s a film built for a larger audience who might consider \u201cDie Hard\u201d much too violent and gritty. To its credit, Johnson is very good as a family man and fits in to the role well, especially when playing off of Neve Campbell. I also really enjoyed how she was a lot less a damsel in distress calling for help, and more getting active and working toward saving her kids. I even grinned when she took down a henchman who had her at knife point. That said, despite the great cast, and interesting mixing of premises, \u201cSkyscraper\u201d fails to engage, feeling so generic and bland as it chugs along.<\/p>\n

Even at ninety minutes, it\u2019s a struggle to sit through and lacks any kind of excitement or energy within the seams of its story. I almost had to focus to keep my attention to what becomes a repetitive and ho hum action picture. Sans the first scrap with Johnson and Pablo Schreiber, there\u2019s simply nothing here that pops out, and Johnson doesn\u2019t break loose like he does in films like \u201cFast and the Furious.\u201d I love the idea of a hero unencumbered by his disability, I love the idea of a mom and dad hero struggling to save their kids, I love the concept of mixing \u201cTowering Inferno\u201d with \u201cDie Hard.\u201d It\u2019s just the writers and producers never do anything remotely good with any of it. But at least we get an absolutely clear confirmation that \u201cSkyscraper\u201d is set in Hong Kong. That international box office means everything. I\u2019m a big fan of Johnson, and it\u2019s great to see Campbell back, they\u2019re just bogged down by such a sub-par, dull, by-the-numbers action vehicle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a big fan of Dwayne Johnson. What ever he\u2019s in, I\u2019m automatically going to watch no matter what as he packs a star quality that\u2019s been missing in movies for fifteen years. I guess with every action star, it\u2019s an oath they take that they must have their own \u201cDie Hard\u201d in their repertoire, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[58,71,240,288,391,1087],"class_list":["post-28513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-adventure","tag-crime","tag-disaster","tag-gangster","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28513"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28516,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28513\/revisions\/28516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}