Skyscraper (2018)
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber
Framed and on the run, a former FBI agent must save his family from a blazing fire in the world's tallest building.
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The family element (with Neve Campbell as Will's wife) is key, providing the rationale for Will -- the latest version of the right guy in the wrong place -- to engage in a series of death-defying feats, in much the way Arnold Schwarzenegger hit the kill (and kill and kill) switch when his daughter was kidnapped in "Commando."
The film, a dopey embiggening that is to John McTiernan’s Die Hard what Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World was to Steven Spielberg’s first dino-chomp movie, features dead-serious suicide bombers, guns pointed at weeping children and at least three scenes where the bad guys, a pan-national consortium representing “three criminal syndicates,” indiscriminately machine-gun cops and civilians.
The film, a dopey embiggening that is to John McTiernan’s Die Hard what Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World was to Steven Spielberg’s first dino-chomp movie, features dead-serious suicide bombers, guns pointed at weeping children, and at least three scenes in which the bad guys, a pan-national consortium representing “three criminal syndicates,” indiscriminately machine-gun cops and civilians.
In many ways, Skyscraper is reminiscent of White House Down, another piece of building-centric escapist silliness that hit its tropes well and had fun doing so.
Impressively monikered writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber (“We’re the Millers”) has lifted almost every element from John McTiernan’s 1988 landmark “Die Hard” in the screenplay and direction for the Vancouver-shot action movie “Skyscraper.”
Thurber, who is still best known for his Ben Stiller collegiate-minded comedy Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004) and an ill-conceived attempt at adapting Michael Chabon in 2008 with The Mysteries of Pittsburgh , has since wobbled around in formula heavy studio comedies benefitting from featured A-list actors in formula heavy but otherwise “original” concepts ( We’re the Millers; Central Intelligence ).
Director Rawson Marshall Thurber—whose resume includes Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and We’re The Millers, plus working with Johnson in the comedy Central Intelligence—keeps things moving briskly enough that there’s not really much time to dwell on the preposterous plot and sometimes stilted dialogue that pad the spaces between the Rock doing what everyone really comes to see the Rock do.
Written and Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber ("Central Intelligence," "We're the Millers").
Yes, writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber ( We’re The Millers , Central Intelligence ) really pushes the whole “Dwayne Johnson is strong” thing to the limit, but who the hell cares when there’s such unbridled joy to be had whilst viewing so.
Writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber (2013's " We're the Millers ") keeps apprehension levels high as he devises any number of impossible situations for star Dwayne Johnson (2017's " Baywatch ").
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I know we aren’t supposed to judge a summer popcorn flick this specifically, but I’ve seen some absurd movies (one that briefly comes to mind is “Olympus Has Fallen”) and they manage to embrace their absurdity without feeling dumb.
Most people know the latter when they see it; for every Die Hard there are a dozen Olympus Has Fallen , for every Independence Day scores more like Geostorm follow.