Review: In 'Skyscraper', Dwayne Johnson scales a cliché trick

At one point in the thriller "Skyscraper", the hero played by Dwayne Johnson assures the audience: "It's stupid". Rawson Marshall Thurber built the entire movie around this redundant truism. And why not? All he had to do was retrain him, put his relationship with Mr. Johnson – they were working together on "Central Intelligence," as making fun of a title like Hollywood produced – and Mr. Thurber had his argument: Towering Inferno "meets" Die Hard "but in China.The dominance of the box office was guaranteed from the signing of the seven-digit agreement

There is of course a story, or the unless an excuse, which finds Mr. Johnson's character, Will, a security analyst, visiting Hong Kong on business with his surgeon wife, Sarah (Neve Campbell), and their twins. interviewed for a high-end job in the tallest building in the world – an ugly metal monster that looks like a twisted trunk of an African elephant grabbing a baseball – violence occurs.Highly armed thugs put the fire on a floor Will be wounded in a brutal fight and must perform a self-surgery. Men in black run and plot. Sarah and the little ones are jostling each other. A black chick with an anxious haircut shoots down an anonymous computer room.

Above all, Will goes to work, or rather Mr. Johnson, because the character suffers the hero's crucible with throbbing muscles, awesome tongue-in-cheek and yards of duct tape. As is always the case in male fantasies, an ordinary man stands up, just and noble and true, and turns into a hero. As he gets up, Will dodges balls and bullets, climbs a burgeoning construction crane and jumps through an impossible void, a superhero without a cape or wallet. Again and again, he also swings by one swish-glistening Hitchcockian hand while all Hong Kong anxiously watches his escapades below or on TV, in presumptive harmony with the film's audience.

There are intermittent pleasures, including Mrs. Campbell, who seems ready to move on to a new career phase by playing striking maternal types with Mona Lisa smiles. Especially, "Skyscraper" is about the other character of the film, much more imposing: Mr. Johnson, an artist whose colossal physicality is remarkably complemented by a delicate expressiveness too rarely seen in contemporary blockbusters. It does not have to do much here, but as one of the last authentic monuments of masculinity, it easily keeps you going. (To see him flex more than muscles, watch the unfairly slandered fantasy film " Southland Tales" or his work on the HBO "Ballers" show.)