Former FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader and U.S. war veteran Will Ford (Dwanye Johnson) is in charge of evaluating the safety of skyscrapers. While working in China, the tallest yet safest building in the world goes on fire and Will is being framed for it. Above all, his family is trapped inside the blazing building above the fire line. It is Will’s mission to save his family, clear his name and find who caused the fire.

Skyscraper was released on July 13 and was directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber. The film has achieved a 51 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

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SKYSCRAPER ROUNDUP

“Blockbusters like Skyscraper are near-indestructible entertainment delivery systems partly because they inoculate themselves against criticism with winking self-awareness — hence Will’s ‘stupid’ line and the succession of increasingly outrageous physics-and-logic-defying stunts. Mr. Thurber ups the ante with cinematic allusions (The Lady From Shanghai) that feel like reviewer bait, and wouldn’t you know, I took it. Of course I did. That’s part of the contract, as is my noting that it’s welcome how race quietly figures into the story without becoming a problem that needs solving. And it is genuinely welcome even if it would have been nicer if the movie had tried harder on every other count.”

–Manohla Dargis, The New York Times 

“There are feeble laugh lines and gags tossed here and there—fleeting glimpses of warmth—but they fall flat. Inexplicably, the film tries to make duct tape an inside joke with the audience after Will uses it to bandage a wound while cracking, ‘If you can’t fix it with duct tape, you’re not using enough duct tape.’ We later see him scaling the side of the building with duct tape wrapped around his palms, while saying aloud, ‘This is stupid.’ It is, indeed, but acknowledging it as much doesn’t make it funny. More questionably, his prosthetic leg is used as both a weapon in a fight and to prop open a fast-closing door at a crucial moment. At one point, while suspended upside down outside of the building, he falls out of his prosthesis and ends up clinging to it for dear life. Is this supposed to be a crack-up scene or a touching display of a man saved by his disability? Unclear. These moments—like a lot about the movie—feels tonally off.”

–Tracy Clark-Flory, The Muse

“Amid the cloying family subplots, ridiculous set pieces and endless cavalcade of ripe dialogue, the really telling problem is the lack of decent villains. Our hero spends more time tearing apart computer panels than bad guys, wrestling with subroutines instead of scoundrels. Even worse, Thurber insists on spending time introducing characters at length and then immediately offing them, meaning there’s no one with any trace of personality on screen for most of the runtime. Die Hard’s suave villain Hans Gruber has never been so sorely missed… This is the Rock’s third blockbuster of the year after Rampage and the surprisingly good Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. You’d think the flicks with the giant gorilla and the sentient video game would be in competition for the most supremely silly outings, but Skyscraper’s high-rise histrionics give even overgrown apes a run for their money in the ridiculousness stakes.”

–Richard Trenholm, CNET

“With no real personalities to play against on the villains’ side, the film’s human-on-human (as opposed to human-on-the-laws-of-physics) action is more ordinary than it might have been. But Johnson is nothing if not invested, and it’s gratifying to see him play Unstoppable Dad, even in such a setting. At this point in his career, why is Johnson still having to make mindless films watchable? Why aren’t genuine action auteurs lining up to make movies with this man?”

–John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter

Watch the trailer below.