Released in 1988, Die Hard, a Bruce Willis action film about a lone resourceful cop named John McClane who, by himself, fights off a terrorist attack on a high-rise tower while on holiday with his family, became a box office hit and a cult classic. Viewers loved the formula of a tough but vulnerable hero overcoming the odds to save his loved ones while trapped in a building under threat.

In fact, so much so that Die Hard spawned a number of sequels and hundreds, yes hundreds, of knock offs. Sure, the formula has seen some variations, but the films are generally recognisable as Die Hard clones. They’ve starred anyone from Sylvester Stallone to Steven Segal to Dolph Lundgren to Keanu Reeves to Gerard Butler.

Well, with Skyscraper you can add Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to that list. This clone is true to the original Die Hard formula in a number of ways, complete with an incredibly tall building, a hero’s family under threat and a gang of terrorists. But that’s where the similarities end with the original Die Hard and begin with the loud Die Hard sequels.

Even as Die Hard knock-offs go, this clone with The Rock is migraine-inducing. Watch Die Hard instead

What really made Die Hard click was John McClane’s humanity. This was a hero the audience could identify with, who was skilled yet could perish at any moment. The sequels, unfortunately, turned McClane into something of a superhero; less Jason Bourne and more James Bond.

Here, in Skyscraper, Will Sawyer (The Rock), the former soldier and now security specialist feels almost invulnerable. The stunts he pulls defy physics, logic and could perhaps only be explained by the Pakistani inventor who claimed to have constructed a car that ran on water (I am sure he’s still sitting by the phone waiting for Elon Musk’s call). Now, a burning building that feels like a death trap, a small army of Asian soldiers who appear fearsome enough to send chills up your spine, and psychotic antagonist masterminds, all pitted against The Rock in this sort of film doesn’t seem like very fair odds … for the villains. So to level the playing field, the muscular action hero plays an amputee, which on paper seems like an appreciable nod to the differently-abled community. Initially this seems true, but soon you realise the fake leg is as much of a hindrance to Sawyer as is Captain America’s shield to Captain America.

There are enough plot holes here to make you realise that writer Rawson Marshall Thurber didn’t care beyond giving the film’s bankable movie star a vehicle to show off his talents.

Of course, I haven’t explored the narrative too deeply beyond explaining its derivative nature with a history lesson, and I am not going to, because it may leave you with a headache. To keep things short, the storytelling itself is quite awful, even as far as Die Hard knock-offs go. There are enough plot holes here to make you realise that writer Rawson Marshall Thurber didn’t care beyond giving the film’s bankable movie star a vehicle to show off his talents.

Which brings me to back to The Rock. As far as the action goes, it’s all big stupid fun. Whether you can enjoy it enough to ignore the migraine induced by the plot depends on what side of the bed you woke up on. But usually, when it comes to films like this, our former WWE superstar-turned-actor carries proceedings on pure charisma alone. Yet here, The Rock feels off his game — his performance is not as charming as in the seven hundred other brainless action films he’s starred in this year. Or maybe it’s because halfway through the film I realised I’d rather be watching Die Hard.

PG-13 for sequences of gun violence and action, and for brief strong language

Published in Dawn, ICON, July 22nd, 2018