'Skyscraper' review: Dwayne Johnson fights a bunch of CGI fire

We, as a planet, don't deserve Neve Campbell.

In 1988, a little film starring Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman called Die Hard came flying into theaters and took the world by storm.

Suddenly, this premise of having a hero trapped in a confined situation with a whole bunch of bad guys became the next big thing for action movies, as there have been a countless number of knockoffs (including the Die Hard sequels, which have really just been trying to emulate the success of the first movie) that try to capitalize on that premise.

Skyscraper, directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (Central Intelligence, Dodgeball) and starring Dwayne Johnson, is the latest of these movies.

It also just so happens to be one of the more unapologetic Die Hard lookalikes that you’ll see in awhile, as they aren’t even trying to hide the fact that this is basically the same movie.

Ten years ago, Will Sawyer (Johnson) was nothing more than a military hot-head who lived for nothing more than the adrenaline rush of combat.

That all changed, however, after a mission goes sideways and he finds himself waking up in a hospital bed with an amputated leg.

The news isn’t all bad, though — it’s in that hospital where Sawyer meets his wife Sarah (Neve Campbell), whom he eventually raises two kids with.

After getting back on his feet and deciding to hang up his military career, Sawyer instead decides to go into security. Think Scott’s day job in Ant-Man and the Wasp, as he’s basically hired to seek out security threats or flaws in these huge corporate high-rises.

His latest job brings him all the way out to Hong Kong, in what is being called the tallest skyscraper in the world (no, it doesn’t actually exist in real life). Since this is a big trip and he’s going to be gone for some time, Sawyer decides to bring his family along with him because, hey, why not? They get to stay in the skyscraper and his kids have never seen Hong Kong before, so it’s practically like a mini-vacation.

A mini-vacation that goes terribly wrong. During their stay at the skyscraper, a terrorist group infiltrates the building and begins causing mayhem as they try to burn the whole thing to the ground.

I mean, it’s slightly more complicated than that as the terrorist leader — Kores Botha (Roland Moller) — has some beef with the guy who designed the skyscraper — Zhao Long Ji (Chin Han) — so he came up with some ridiculous plan that would never actually work in real life to get revenge.

Then again, the extent of his plan is really just to create a bunch of CGI fire everywhere, so maybe it’s not all that complicated.

Point is, Sawyer and his family are stuck in this building and have to find a way out. To make matters worse, the terrorists are also after Sawyer since he knows the security systems and the entire layout of the building — which means we’re going to get a lot of scenes of Dwayne Johnson punching things in the face and throwing axes at people.

Saying that Skyscraper has a dumb, unrealistic plot doesn’t even begin to cover it. There’s a moment during the movie when Johnson is about to do something completely ridiculous and he practically turns to the camera and says “This is so stupid.” We really don’t need the reminder, as he does this thing anyway and comes out of it with barely a scratch on him.

The goods news is that Rawson Marshall Thurber and everyone else involved know this. They aren’t trying to create an Oscar-winning film or even a grounded action movie. Everything is heightened on purpose, as they don’t want their audience thinking all that much during Skyscraper.

That has both positive and negative effects. The positive is that, against my better judgment, it creates for a ridiculously fun action movie.

Skyscraper works better for me than something like the later Fast and the Furious movies — which have taken the idea of dumb fun and run with it a bit too far — as they’re actually taking themselves somewhat serious here on a dramatic level. Characters aren’t cracking jokes in every scene and it never becomes a contest to see how stupid it can become — they have a tone, they stick with it and that works.

What’s sad is that they don’t really do much more than that. Die Hard (yeah, I’m going to keep bringing up that comparison) may have been a simple premise, but there was a lot going on under the surface of that movie — messages about corporate greed, John McClane dealing with a divorce and trying to find purpose, etc.

Skyscraper has all the opportunity in the world to do something similar and, at the beginning of the movie, it looks like they might be with Han’s character. By the end of it, though, none of that has come to fruition as everyone is painted in a black-and-white fashion.

That includes most of the characters, who are also pretty by the numbers. Dwayne Johnson is his usual likable personality, which will never not be fun to watch on screen, but also doesn’t lend to much development.

Neve Campbell, however, is the real scene-stealer. From the trailers, I was worried that they were going to waste Campbell’s talent and reduce her to nothing more than a damsel in distress, but thank God they don’t. She’s actually doing things in Skyscraper — running around and being a part of the action and story — which adds a lot more. It blows my mind that Campbell hasn’t been in more movies since Scream, as Hollywood producers should be lining up around the block to sign her on to their next project.

Skyscraper is exactly the movie you think it’ll be. There’s no point in trying to poke holes in the plot or logic of the movie because you’ll just drive yourself mad. Instead, I’m choosing to look at the positive — this movie was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Great cinema it is not, but it’s still one of the better Die Hard ripoffs I’ve seen.

Watch the trailer for Skyscraper here and then let us know, in the comments below, what you thought about the movie!