Skyscraper

Everyone knows that, in late June 2018, a plucky raccoon climbed to the top of the skyscraper occupied by Minnesota Public Radio.  The little creature was called "the MPR raccoon."  The MPR raccoon had to climb about 18 or 20 stories.  In The Skyscraper, Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson climbs 96 stories, heaving himself upward, on a huge crane parked conveniently close to a towering 202 level skyscraper that happens to be on fire.  It would be fun to say that the MPR raccoon's exploits were more thrilling than those of the Rock in this noisy 2018 thriller (directed by Marshall Thurber).  But, in fact, The Skyscraper is a fairly good movie of its type -- it is exciting, has good special effects, and the stunts are well-executed as well as, more or less, plausible.  There aren't too many blatant violations of the laws of physics and the story, although moronic, is, at least, consistent.

For those of us in Minnesota, the movie begins with evidence that no one in Hollywood has ever been to this State  (As Trump would say, we are in flyover country.)  At a place called Ash Lake, Minnesota, a domestic dispute has escalated into a massive stand-off involving members of the FBI.  This is wildly implausible because FBI members don't typically (or ever) get involved in battles between husbands and their wives.  Things get even more outrageous when the FBI team rappels down a six-hundred foot cliff to get to the cabin where an anguished husband is holding his wife and three children hostage.  Exactly where in the mountains of Minnesota is this supposed to be happening?  This is the obligatory trauma scene explaining why the Rock has retired from his life of violence and become a good family man, living, when next we see him, in the eponymous skyscraper in Hong Kong, and hobbling around on one prosthetic (but, as it turns out highly useful) leg.  He is security expert and has mastered the computer topography and defensive systems of the 202-story double helix-shaped tower.  The Rock goes off to a job interview.  Bad guys intervene and a bunch of people get killed by a team of Asian assassins led by a female ninja.  Here's where the first of the film's many reaction shots occurs:  the female ninja murders about 36 people in hand-to-hand combat -- the camera cuts to one of her associates who looks at her wide-eyed as in "Wow! where did she learn to do that?" and, then, shrugs nonchalantly.  Throughout the film, there are lots of images of people watching the Rock's exploits dangling from the outside of the tower.  At the climax, when all ends happily (except for the army of villains who have been killed), cheering crowds remind us how to respond to the derring-do on-screen -- it's manipulative and a homage to Die Hard, the obvious source for much of this film.

The movie is pretty much non-stop action.  People dodge fiery falling debris and hang from the brink of abysses over roaring flames.  The Rock climbs around on the outside of the skyscraper and, despite a dozen wounds, kills bad guys left and right.  Computers get hacked, shut down, and, then, rebooted in just the nick of time.  Elevators hurl through tubes lined with flames.  And there's a final shoot-out that is stolen in whole cloth from The Lady of Shanghai -- for some reason, the designer of the skyscraper has installed a pop-up hall of mirrors that occupies the interior of the pearl-shaped bulb atop the skyscraper.  There's absolutely no reason for the seventy-five or so obelisk-mirrors that surround the characters in the film's last ten minutes except to allow for much misdirection and fusillades of machine gun fire into the mirrors that erupt into shards.  (Welles staged the whole thing infinitely better.)  Everything is fun and, despite the high body count, this is family friendly entertainment -- the hero is battling to save his plucky wife and two children until the roles are reversed and she is battling to save him.  (The Rocks' wife, played by Neve Campbell, gets to duke it out with the evil lady Ninja -- thus, the film also boasts an impressive cat-fight.)  No one swears or drops any F-bombs and, so, you can take your kids to this picture without any fear of being embarrassed by the events on-screen.  Indeed, you can take your kids to the picture without any fear of anyone being frightened either -- although the situation is always dire, we know that Rock and his wife and two kids are going to survive every deadly situation into which they are hurled.  Just when things get most desperate, of course, we know that rescue is nigh. Ultimately, this is a weakness of a film of this kind.  We know that the high-priced stars are invulnerable.  (That's why it would be fair to say that the rescue of the Wild Boars from the cave in Thailand was, in fact, a lot more thrilling than this film because the outcome was always seriously in doubt -- not so in The Skyscraper.)  It would be nice to see the Rock ram his elbow into a glass-encased niche, breaking glass, access a fire extinguisher and axe, sever an artery in his arm, and bleed out on the floor.  When the Rock pitches a big man-sized fake-bronze column, an inscrutable ornament on one of the floors, off the skyscraper, I was rooting that the heavy object would land right on the head of Neve Campbell and one of the hero's kids.  But no such luck.  The issue is never ever in doubt.