Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Skyscraper (2018)

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Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 07-13-2018, 06:43 PM:

CINEMA: Cinemark Movies 12, Ames, IA
AUDITORIUM: 6, SEAT: C8
PRESENTATION: Cinemark Recline-o-Vision in slope auditorium with Mystery Meat Digital
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: None [Cool]

RATING: Two and one half stars (out of four)

I arrive two minutes past showtime with no advance ticket purchase. I go up to the part of the snack bar that sells tickets and nobody's home. Two girls are selling concessions. I wait. And wait. And wait. About five minutes later, some guy comes up. "Sorry about that!" He sells me a ticket and I am seated with plenty of time because excessive trailers.

THE PLOT: Our skyscraper! Our skyscraper! Our skyscraper is on FIRE! Wackiness ensues.

When I saw the trailers, I assumed this was going to be set in Dubai and based on all those high rise fires they have that are caused by all that flammable plastic cladding they decorate them with. Not so. This movie is set in Hong Kong and the 220 story skyscraper in this disaster has every safety trick in the book and then some. Unfortunately, those features can be turned off if you have the right security clearance, which is handy for the bad guys trying to steal a thingy that initially looks like a fancy sex toy from the building's owner. Enter Dwayne Johnson (as "Will Sawyer"???) to save the day.

The action is absolutely ridiculous. Sawyer gets into the burning building by climbing a crane from the ground to above the fire, which starts on the NINETY-SIXTH FLOOR. There's a scene where he and his daughter are trapped in the middle of a burning room with fire surrounding them that has to be heating the room to a thousand degrees or more and should be full of massive smoke, but of course it isn't, and they're simply crouched and sweating. And so on. The whole town is watching the events unfold on a nearby Jumbotron that exists on the street for no reason aside from promoting the Sharp brand from so many angles that it's clear the magical Jumbotron has immediate access to the movie stock.

The biggest issue I had was the whole thing is played deadly serious. Not many laughs to be had. This movie is big and dumb and silly and that would have helped a lot.

It's an okay ride, but if you want to see some really impressive fire, search Google News for footage of the Safeway in north Phoenix that burned earlier this week.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 07-13-2018, 06:58 PM:

Warning: Two sorta-spoilers below.

1. The bad guy stole our hero's suitcase at the beginning of the show. Why bother? Even if the tablet had been in the suitcase, it wouldn't unlock until our hero looked at it.

2. Walking on a plank over the abyss with high heeled boots, and then again with a child on your back. [Confused]

Wouldn't you take your boots off? And crawl?

The movie isn't bad overall; I was entertained. But if you've seen Die Hard, you've seen the story before.

It's decent action movie if you don't over-think it.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-19-2018, 11:13 PM:

This movie is compared a lot to Die Hard and The Towering Inferno.

Die Hard is a classic, one of the best action films ever. There was never any doubt that this movie wouldn't even be worthy of standing in Bruce Willis's bloody, beaten up shadow.

I've always thought "The Towering Inferno," on the other hand, was a good action film for the '70s, but doesn't hold up all that well today.

I have changed my mind. "Towering Inferno" is an absolute masterpiece compared to this show, which trots out every single possible action set-piece in the book and then turns up the action to such unbelievable levels that you feel like you're watching a cartoon. Which, I guess, is just what this is.

The scene where The Rock (who has a prosthetic leg) has to vault across about 25 feet of sky from a crane (after climbing up about 100 floors -- with a prosthetic leg) and then catch himself on a windowsill by the fingertips, fall, and then catch himself again with the fingertips of ONE HAND, is about the pinnacle of stupidness among many attempts at new heights of ridiculousness.

You take all of the above and tack it onto a story that has so many characters, subplots and other unnecessary business and you've got one big turd of a movie. After watching it myself and then reading the synopsis on Wikipedia, I'm still not quite sure why the damn building was set on fire.

I think the problem with action movies today is they're all trying to out-spectacular everything that has come before, and they've completely left any attempts at plausibility in the dust, thanks in part, no doubt, to superhero movies.

Towering Inferno is cheesy, no doubt, and that burning building contains far less smoke than a real burning building would, but beyond that, the situations it presents make far more sense and are way more relateable than anything in this snooze-fest.

The ending is also the biggest shortcut/ripoff of the year, storywise.

2 out of 4 stars, and I gave it a bonus star because I liked the sound mix.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 08-19-2018, 11:53 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
I'm still not quite sure why the damn building was set on fire.

The bad guys wanted to force the building owner to retrieve the doodad and leave the building on their hijacked helicopter. If there was no emergency he would have no reason to open the safe and if there was no fire on the lower floors he could just walk out the front door.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 08-20-2018, 12:58 AM:

I thought this was a rather generic cut and paste action movie that really didn't offer any surprises or memorable action scenes, okay the car chase scene where the two women were duking it out was pretty amusing ... but ugh, I could have had a V8 instead [Big Grin]