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"Daddy who likes?" Ask a special operations guy, William Sawyer ( Dwayne Johnson ), while he separates from his kids for the day in the new action film ] Skyscraper opened on July 13th. "Dad, love me," the children reply.
But why stop there? Because, really, daddy loves us all. Johnson, the big movie star we need, knows how to deliver the products we dream of in this stupid summer time. Of course, he dropped us into this incredibly goofy nasty monster this spring Rampage. But it was only a bitter amuse-bouche to this richer and more robust stupidity explosion, which found Johnson in peak hero mode, forcing the ridiculous proportions of his body to a superhuman effect satisfactory. No one could claim that Skyscraper is good exactly, but it definitely delivers the pleasantly fleshy boom we expect from our dear old dad.
Johnson re-teams with his director central intelligence Rawson Marshall Thurner for this thriller largely placed over Hong Kong. But Skyscraper is not an open comedy, instead finding sneaky laughs in his half-deliberate movie B traps. The joke, as is usually the case in his films, is to watch Johnson do what he's been doing on this Earth to do, physics being damned. There is much contempt for the couple, the mass and the trajectory – not to mention the thermodynamics – found in Skyscraper that pits Sawyer against a terrorist ( Roland Møller ). owned by a visionary billionaire named Zhao (Singaporean star Chin Han ), going up to ignite a massive building to get it. The building is the Pearl, a rainbow Sim City -esque arcology sheltering not only commercial and residential spaces, but an indoor park in the clouds and a platform of high-tech observation that seems built for the express purpose
Things will go wrong in the beautiful and dark tower of Zhao, a Titanic rooted in the ground – and that's the case, failing Sawyer's children and his wife, Sarah ( Neve Campbell ), on the inside. It's up to Sawyer, who has a prosthetic leg due to an injury at work 10 years earlier, to return to the flamboyant building to save his people.
Skyscraper takes place in a linear and predictable way, but stages exuberant, exhilarating and acrophobic pieces, to forgive all the familiar architecture. Johnson, climbing and leaping and grumbling and slandering, is a tradesperson while he goes to work, but he does not seem to get bored as he did in Rampage. Something about Skyscraper heated, airborne mechanisms triggers its innate brilliance. He's not quite in the movie, but he knows that he sells what he's doing – there's a confident overkill in his blunt instrument performance, which is really all we ask him.
Should we ask for more? Skyscraper contains some glimmers of a serious and haunted performance – Johnson plays the wounded who walk after all – only for a second or two, I wished Johnson a more contemplative vehicle. He did the work of insinuating us with all his improbable physical mind; It may be time now that he has the opportunity to take us somewhere. But, nah. These notions were ephemeral as the fire encroached, and Johnson became leaner and sweeter. Here's where he's supposed to be: a giant standing astride the disaster and, literally in a scene, holding things together.
If someone plays against the guy, or at least against the current trajectory, it's Campbell. There is a kind of cozy ingenuity in her casting: those of us of a certain age have rather the habit of seeing her run at risk in the franchise Scream and it's a funny solace to see her do it again. Fortunately, Sarah has other things to do in the film, the role of rare woman in this type of film that participates and even helps. It's unfortunate that we are impressed by this inclusion, but, sigh, we are here.
Beyond Campbell, support players are mostly forgettable. I guess I should say something here about how it's about a Hollywood movie in Asia and with Asian actors and extras, and what all that could mean for the industry . But all too often, movies like this – manifestations of the changing realities of large-scale demographic targeting – are evoked as if they were scams. Which, yes, maybe they are to a certain extent. But it is also about a movie in which The Rock jumps from a crane into a fire tower. We are all losing our heads here. Still, it might be nice to see some of the Chinese characters have a little more agency, or the centrality of the story. As box office fortunes are increasingly sought overseas every tent season, I hope we will see this change soon.
Elsewhere on the representative front, this film could be considered as a champion of the disabled. Sawyer's injury is somehow a curious blessing that leads him to the family he loves so much. In a practical sense, his prosthetic leg is also very practical a few times. The movie really only remembers Sawyer's body being convenient, which can reduce it to something cheap. But maybe not? Perhaps the way Sawyer seems to forget his supposed limits is a kind of empowerment, a testimony of latent possibility in all people, regardless of their physical situation.
But let's not go too far. Skyscraper does not quite deserve that. This is especially a diversion put at the service of air conditioning, an inelegant but effective excuse to leave behind the choking of our lives for just under two hours. Johnson knows why we are here, and he performs his panting acrobatics with conscientious grace. How wonderfully simple and giving it can be. Dad really likes us, is not it?
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