Before Rawson Marshall Thurber shot the Netflix smash Red Notice, he made sure disaster hit Skyscraper. Here too, superstar Dwayne Johnson stood on camera for the director. The duo previously worked together on the action comedy Central Intelligence. While other stars got to star alongside him in the other two titles, Johnson is almost the sole focus in “Skyscraper”.
“skyscraperruns today, June 8, 2023 at 8:15 p.m. on VOX. The channel offers a repeat on June 9 at 10:15 p.m. If either date doesn’t suit you, you can order the FSK 12 title from online retailers like Amazon as a DVD or Blu-ray. The latter is even available in 4K/UltraHD and 3D versions. Alternatively, the movie is also available for streaming there as paid video-on-demand:
In addition to Dwayne Johnson, Scream 1-5 star Neve Campbell, Chin Han (Mortal Kombat), Noah Taylor (Peaky Blinders), Byron Mann (Hell On Wheels), Hannah Quinlivan (Skyfire), and Pablo Schreiber from Halo are on the cast list. The main villain is the Dane Roland Møller, who has won several awards for his moving role in “Unter dem Sand”.
“Skyscraper” on VOX: That’s the story
Will Sawyer (Dwayne Johnson) moves from the US to Hong Kong with his wife Sarah (Neve Campbell) and their twins. The ex-elite soldier and former FBI official should provide security in the tallest skyscraper in the world that has just been built there. Owned by tycoon Zhao-Long Ji (Chin Han), the skyscraper has 225 floors, of which only the lower part is currently open to the public.
When a large fire suddenly breaks out on the 96th floor, Sawyer’s family, who live only a few feet above the flames, is put in danger. The fire is started by the mercenary Botah (Roland Møller) and his henchmen, who want to get hold of a USB stick in Ji’s possession. Can Sawyer, who lost a leg in action years ago, save his loved ones while taking down the terrorists?
“Blazing Inferno” Meets “Die Hard”
Our good three and a half out of five possible stars MOVIE STARTS review mentions “Skyscraper” respectively and hits the nail on the head. If you’re looking for realism and subtlety in this story, you’ve definitely landed in the wrong movie. For director Thurber, the spectacular visuals of his set pieces and action sequences are more important than the laws of physics, which would make many of them impossible.
And the actions of its main character, whose main weapon is not a gun but a roll of universal tape, are mostly not anchored in the realm of what is physically possible. However, the majority of action-inclined fans shouldn’t care about that. Because with his charm, Johnson almost only holds together this mix of genre classics such as “Flaming Inferno” and “Die Hard” and the Korean disaster thriller “The Tower”. The special effects do the rest.
Dubbed ‘The Pearl’, the one-kilometre house looks enchanting, sparkling in all its splendor in the sun or bursting into flames to illuminate Hong Kong’s night sky. It really doesn’t matter if it could be built at all or who, apart from a few super-rich, would actually have to live in it. The structure only exists in “Skyscraper” anyway, so we can watch it flaring as spectacularly as possible – and it works great.
*