Skyhard with a vengeance (and duct tape).

Say what you want about professional wrestling, it doesn’t half instil in you a sense of work ethic. Yes, of course it’s scripted, faintly absurd panto but take a look at the schedule of any given wrestler currently on the books of the WWE and you’d be hard pressed to find a harder working, physically enduring, or mentally driven performer within the entertainment industry.

As one of wrestling’s greatest exponents, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson embodies this drive more than most. While he continues to drift back to the ring on occasion, Johnson has been a full-blown movie star since 2001’s The Mummy Returns and his extensive filmography since then highlights just how insanely high the man’s work ethic is. It’s been a jam-packed seventeen years for The Rock and it only looks to be getting busier if his long list of announced projects is anything to go by.

Of course, quantity doesn’t always equal quality and, while his incredible drive and commitment is to be commended, Hollywood’s increasing obsession with pushing Johnson in anything and everything that involves large explosions, with scant disregard for the value of the end product, is surely going to lead to overexposure eventually.

We’re just over half way through the year now and already on our second Dwayne Johnson film to aim for the exact same big, dumb action market and it’s all becoming a little bit draining. For better or worse, Skyscraper and previous effort, Rampage, feel like the perfect Dwayne Johnson doubleheader, highlighting all the attributes that make him such an alluring screen presence, while just as easily emphasising how repetitive his career could become if handled incorrectly.

Years after a botched hostage mission that cost him his left leg, former FBI agent and war veteran Will Sawyer (Dwayne Johnson) now assesses security for skyscrapers across the globe. On assignment in Hong Kong to evaluate the tallest and safest building in the world, The Pearl, Sawyer is caught amidst a catastrophic blaze for which he has been framed. With his family trapped in the burning building, Sawyer is left no option but to fight to clear his name and save everyone he holds dear.

If the setup for Skyscraper sounds rather familiar, it should. At its element, the plot is more or less what we saw from many a Hollywood action flick of the 90s; a decade when hostages, disasters, and hard-as-nails heroes risking it all in filthy shirts ruled the box office. While Die Hard will be the most obvious comparison, considering the circumstances and setting (one which the film’s marketing department feel all too eager to have us make), the film’s dynamics appear reminiscent of everything from The Rock to Speed via Air Force One. 

Considering the distinct retro feel to Dwayne Johnson’s star power right now, the throwback nature of his latest film seems appropriate and rather fun to a point, however it all seems a little too old hat for its own good. With the possible exception of Tom Cruise, Johnson is about the only actor these days able to put bums on seats through his name alone; yet, there’s a very good reason the era of the bankable star has passed, and the industry’s obsession with pushing The Rock in every dumb-but-fun vehicle going risks shuffling him into the same sphere many action heroes of yesteryear currently occupy eventually.

The similarities between Skyscraper and Rampage are too enormous to avoid, as we’re offered up some of the most bombastic, ridiculous, leave-your-brain-at-home action you’ll likely see all year, yet the film is once again carried almost singlehandedly by the commitment, charisma, and action star prowess of its lead.

Much like Rampage, it’s big and dumb, yet there’s no denying the pure, unadulterated fun of it all. Like any good throwaway action blockbuster, Skyscraper is absolute nonsense of the highest order, but it’s the kind of fun, adrenaline-pumping nonsense that works perfectly when the sun comes out and we all feel the need to take our cinema-going experiences a little less seriously.

In many ways, the film’s more contained nature suits Johnson’s skillset far better than the sprawling carnage of Rampage and the action in and around The Pearl is as death-defying and dizzying as one would imagine, making full use of Johnson’s strengths as a performer with swinging, jumping, punching, and body slamming aplenty. The action is never particularly innovative but it never has to be, as the building’s dazzling, high-tech setup and sheer height allow even the most basic action to pop.

Unfortunately, while the action impresses, the plot and characterisation are left wanting. The Die Hard-light narrative and cardboard cut-out characters go absolutely nowhere special, as we hit action cliché after action cliché en route to a conclusion that just sort of happens, with little to no plot exertion or innovation.

Everyone you expect to be a bad guy is a bad guy and everyone you see as a good guy is just that, with very little nuance to allow for anything in-between, and the result severely lacks the bite or guile that made genre classics like Die Hard tick. There are moments where the plot feels like it’s going to kick into gear and offer us something surprising any second, yet it never really materialises, feeling like a huge missed opportunity to lift Skyscraper above mediocrity.

That said, Skyscraper’s desperation to build itself in Die Hard’s image does occasionally click and, as the perfect example, the recurring use of duct tape feels like a nice little nod to the kind of DIY anti-terrorist innovating that John McClane would gleefully showcase. These fun, fairly silly moments feel few and far between however, as you’re often left wishing the film would lighten up and stop taking itself so seriously.

Skyscraper is, however, sprinkled with some very nice, very welcome touches that add just that little bit of shine to a film that constantly threatens to become terribly dull. In a role that initially teeters on the edge of damsel in distress cliché, Neve Campbell is given far more purchase with her character than even far better action films would allow. Of course, she still remains largely in the shadow of the film’s star, yet Campbell easily breaks free of the action stereotype that haunts many female characters within the genre, to ensure she’s able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Johnson when necessary.

The design and feel of The Pearl inject a bit of style and panache into an otherwise bland affair, with the building’s stylish, futuristic technology adding a unique spin on the Die Hard aesthetic. It’s certainly not a patch on Nakatomi Plaza but it works well enough to give an exciting, 21st century feel to things, with its back story ensuring that Skyscraper’s Hong Kong location never feels as forced as it does with many modern, internationally-funded blockbusters.

While he’s nowhere near the sparkling form of recent hits like Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Johnson is, without doubt, what allows Skyscraper to stand out from the action crowd. Even in his calmer moments, there’s just something undeniably charismatic about the way Johnson carries himself and there are many times where you can imagine the film falling flat on its face from a great height if it weren’t for his captivating presence.

Will Sawyer is far from the best role we’ve seen Johnson in but there’s certainly enough there to make the character both memorable and incredibly likable. The tragic backstory has been done a million times before but it works well within the confines of what Skyscraper is looking to do, while adding a nice emotional punch to the plot; however, the most distinctive thing about the character isn’t his towering frame or physical prowess, but the disability that quietly informs his approach to adversity.

Without making too much of it, Skyscraper does a fantastic, surprisingly nuanced job of portraying Sawyer’s disability and its relation to both the character and the plot. Heroic depictions of disability have long been the domain of worthy, Oscar-bait drama but, in many ways, Skyscraper does a far better job of it, thanks primarily to a flat-out refusal to get gratuitous with Will only having one leg and the subtle, matter-of-fact way its weaved into the plot.

Great strides have been made for gender and race representation on the big screen in recent years, so this kind of positive portrayal of disability is a welcome leap in the right direction for a scandalously underrepresented section of society. By simultaneously normalising and celebrating disability for what it is, Skyscraper feels like a big step in the right direction on the subject and should be celebrated, if for nothing else, then as a fine example of what can be done to celebrate the low-key, everyday heroics of living with a disability on the big screen with minimal fuss and maximum impact.

Unapologetically taking a nostalgic lead from the likes of Die Hard, Skyscraper is the kind of throwback action vehicle that feels out of place in an era bereft of star power, but with Dwayne Johnson’s limitless charisma onboard, it just about works. The nuts-and-bolts plot and clichéd, forgettable characters offer absolutely nothing that we haven’t seen a million times before, yet it’s overtly bombastic, ridiculous, nonsensical nature makes it a whole lot of fun if approached accordingly. While its certainly far from the best the action genre has to offer, Skyscraper is a sturdily constructed summer blockbuster that, much like the film’s true, unheralded hero – duct tape – manages to just about hold itself together in the end.