Skyscraper Is A Forgettable & Generic Die Hard Knock-Off

Skyscraper is very obviously being made in the mold of the iconic 1988 movie Die Hard and who can blame writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber for wanting to make a film in that mold considering both how good Die Hard is and how there's a surprisingly large number of Die Hard emulators that have turned out to be awesome, most notably Roland Emmerich's criminally underappreciated 2013 gem White House Down. Unfortunately, Skyscraper will go down in history as one of the more middling Die Hard knock-off's, one that's shockingly bland considering its central premise is all about the leading man from Faster trying to break into a massive skyscraper that's on fire.

Central Intelligence Review

For all of Dwayne Johnson's accomplishments in his career (one of which includes finally becoming a viable leading man with last summer's San Andreas after box office non-starters like Faster and Hercules), the charisma and charm that got him this far as world renowned celebrity are on full display in his turn as Bob Stone in Central Intelligence. Playing a dude who was a portly misfit in high school whose grown up into a naive super-assassin, Johnson always carries a smile on his face and tosses his entire being into the role. He's a hoot-and-a-half turning a pretty rote archetype (specifically the dude who looks like a conventionally hyper masculine individual that has similarly conventionally feminine interests) and breathes new vibrant life into it.