Skyscraper

Mash together Die Hard with The Towering Inferno, add an extra helping of absurdity, and you have filmmaker Rawson Marshall Thurber’s live-action cartoon, which provides a massive but also brainless adrenaline rush—and not much else. Dwayne Johnson is Will Sawyer, a top security expert who lost a leg in a SWAT rescue attempt years ago. Will married the military nurse (Neve Campbell) who saw him through rehab, and they now have darling twin kids. The family has come to Hong Kong to take up residence in The Pearl, the world’s tallest building, so that Will can do final checks before its grand opening. Things go awry when an army of thugs invade the building and set it ablaze, trapping Sawyer’s family inside, along with the building’s owner and his entourage. Naturally, our intrepid hero climbs a construction crane, crashes through a window, and tries to save his wife and kids. As the police watch helplessly, Will’s increasingly farfetched feats of derring-do are applauded vociferously by a crowd of observers down on the street, and he eventually identifies the villains responsible for the attack. Hard to believe that such a preposterous lump of action hokum could have been put to paper, let alone given a $125-million-plus budget, but Skyscraper is clearly a big studio production, and Johnson earns his paycheck by gamely embracing this nonsense. Unfortunately, even his likability cannot prevent this disaster movie from being a true disaster. Optional. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by director Rawson Marshall Thurber, the behind-the-scenes featurettes “Dwayne Johnson: Embodying a Hero” (4 min.), “Inspiration” (4 min.), “Opposing Forces” (3 min.), “Friends No More” (3 min.), “Kids In Action” (3 min.), and “Pineapple Pinch” (2 min.), plus deleted scenes (12 min.) and extended scenes (10 min.). Exclusive to the Blu-ray release are bonus DVD and digital copies of the film. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a mindless action film.] (F. Swietek)