Individual moments certainly stand out, with the staggeringly overqualified Robert Elswit ( Paul Thomas Anderson’s usual cinematographer) placing us in the midst of the fiery madness. His character uses a prosthetic leg, and the film cleverly uses that as an asset, not an impediment. But what’s novel about Johnson in this role is that he’s not completely indestructible. Of course, because it’s Johnson playing this character, he’ll do whatever he must to save them, with each new obstacle that comes his way presenting a more ridiculous challenge than the last. And as the flames rise higher and higher from what began as a thin, orange line on the 96 th floor, the danger and the insanity climb with them. (They shouldn’t even have bothered explaining it, the item in question is so disproportionately insignificant compared to the mayhem it causes.) But when they torch the joint, they don’t realize that Will’s wife and kids are still inside one of the residential units.
A team of villains, led by the menacing Kores Botha (Roland Moller), has broken in with highly flammable chemicals in order to steal the most McGuffiny of McGuffins. “Skyscraper” kicks into gear pretty quickly and remains relentless. Thurber isn’t terribly interested in steadily building tension.
Characters stand around and provide painfully clunky expository dialogue, all of which will matter at some point later, detailing the building’s many high-tech features. A shining, self-contained city, stretching 200-plus stories into the clouds, it’s the brainchild of billionaire Zhao Long Ji ( Chin Han). His latest job has taken him, his wife, Sarah ( Neve Campbell), and their twins (McKenna Grace and Noah Cottrell) to Hong Kong, where he must analyze the safety of The Pearl before it opens. Having lost his left leg below the knee in that explosive incident, Will now serves as a security consultant.
Johnson’s Will Sawyer is a highly trained Marine and FBI agent who’s in charge of a hostage negotiation that goes horribly wrong (another instance of placing characters in the midst of jarring, over-the-top violence). It’s the connective tissue between the daring stunts that’s flimsy.īut first: a flashback to 10 years ago. You’re here to have fun, and “Skyscraper” does indeed provide that in its many dizzying and death-defying action sequences. Having them burst into people’s offices and obliterate them entirely-while the camera steers away from the bloodshed, per MPAA guidelines-feels gratuitous. Many, many people die needlessly in this PG-13 spectacle in the name of thrills, maybe? Character development? The international cadre of criminals who take over a Hong Kong high-rise – the tallest structure in the world, three times the size of the Empire State Building – are clearly, singularly bad. But writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber has attempted the problematic combination of making you feel good about bravery and resilience while also making you feel nothing about the countless bodies that get blown to bits in a hail of automatic gunfire.
0 kommentar(er)
