Movie Review: Skyscraper (2018)

Genre: Thriller  

Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber  

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell  

Running Time: 102 minutes  

Synopsis: Formerly an FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader, security consultant Will Sawyer (Dwayne Johnson) travels to Hong Kong with his wife Sarah (Neve Campbell) and their two children. His assignment is to assess security arrangements for a stunning new skyscraper financed by tycoon Zhao (Chin Han). A team of international mercenaries led by Botha (Roland Møller) want to pressure Zhao into surrendering a critical hard drive, and set the building ablaze with Sarah and the kids trapped inside. Will is framed for the destructive fire, but still has to find a way to recue his family from the inferno.

What Works Well: Big, bold, loud, and yes, dumb in a fun way, this mash-up of The Towering Inferno and Die Hard delivers exactly what it promises: a thrill a minute, over-the-top stunts, an overload of special effects, hissing villains, a save-your-family imperative, and an indestructible hero. The skyscraper itself is a gloriously imaginative marvel, and Dwayne Johnson has the sweaty presence to bulldoze his way to a rescue, his Will Sawyer refreshingly averse to gunplay.

What Does Not Work As Well: More of a video game than a movie, the death-and-gravity-defying obstacles eventually meld into each other and become successively less impressive. The bad guys suffer from poor definition and lack of charisma.

Key Quote:

Will Sawyer (muttering to himself): If you can't fix it with duct tape... you ain't using enough duct tape.

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Movie Review: Pain & Gain (2013)

Genre: Crime Comedy Drama

Director: Michael Bay

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shalhoub, Ed Harris, Rebel Wilson

Running Time: 129 minutes

Synopsis: The setting is Miami in 1993. Body builder and fitness club personal trainer Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) is inspired by charlatan self-help gurus and obsessed with achieving wealth. He recruits fellow body builders Paul (Dwayne Johnson) and Noel (Anthony Mackie) to kidnap gym club client and shady businessman Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub) and have him sign over all his assets. Kershaw turns out to be a tough nut to crack, leading to the involvement of private detective Ed Du Bois (Ed Harris).

What Works Well: Based on real events, Michael Bay creates an enjoyably over-blown and vivid story of dim-witted criminals overreaching in pursuit of the crass yachts-and-sportscars lifestyle sold on television. The action is drenched in sweat and complemented by thumping music, allowing the animated cast to play it straight and revel in the stupidity of men mistaking muscles for brains. The kidnappers are provided distinct personalities: Lugo is the scrappy leader, Noel is the easily impressed follower, and Paul is caught in a fragile attempt at reformation. The acidic humour adds crackles of energy, and Tony Shalhoub has the most fun as the indestructible Kershaw spitting venemous fury at his assailants.

What Does Not Work As Well: Criminal acts and victims are treated with marginally off-putting disdain, and the running time is as artificially bloated as the bulging biceps.

Conclusion: The dark side of the American dream in bright, brash colours.



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Movie Review: Faster (2010)

A superlative revenge thriller, Faster flamboyantly - and surprisingly - enjoys multi-character depth and twisty narrative surprises.

Released after serving ten years in a California prison, Jimmy Cullen (Dwayne Johnson) is intent on avenging the death of his older brother Gary. The siblings were double-crossed after a heist, Gary was killed and Jimmy, the getaway driver, miraculously survived a bullet to the head. Now he secures a powerful Chevelle and targets the men responsible, working his way through a list.

Within hours Jimmy ruthlessly dispatches his first two targets, earning the attention of Los Angeles police detective Cicero (Carla Gugino). She is dismayed when detective Slade Humphries (Billy Bob Thornton), a burned-out addict nearing retirement, is teamed with her. Meanwhile, handsome and wealthy assassin-for-hire (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) receives an assignment to kill Jimmy. The assassin is deeply in love with his girlfriend Lily (Maggie Grace) and pondering whether it's time to retire.

As he fights his inner demons, Jimmy encounters difficulties terminating his next two targets. Meanwhile, Cicero, Slade and the assassin close in, each harbouring a different agenda.

Superficially carrying all the hallmarks of a stock man-on-a-revenge-mission thriller, Faster aims much higher. Director George Tillman Jr. has a clever and character-rich script to work with courtesy of Tony and Joe Gayton. And while Dwayne Johnson in the central role is rock-faced and does not even try to convey charisma, he is adequate when it's time to seek self-doubt.

The pleasant surprises start with three men defined in rich detail. Faster creates space for wheelman Jimmy Cullen, damaged detective Humphries, and the nameless professional assassin to share the spotlight. While Jimmy works his way through his kill-list like a wrecking ball, Humphries is a messy counterpoint as an antagonist and manipulator, complete with a complicated home life and a shadowy past. Meanwhile the suave hired killer schedules personal therapy sessions between assassinations and is becoming convinced Lily is his forever soulmate. He is more than wealthy enough to retire, but out of professional pride needs to fulfil his final contract.

With a foundation of three eloquently drawn characters, the second half dares to humanize further, and soars with audacious backstories for two of Jimmy's intended victims. In a canny feint, the confrontation between Jimmy and the bouncer Nixon (Lester Speight) is advertised as a bone-crunching showdown but suddenly veers into inter-generational torment. Then the preacher Jarod (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) moves from radio voice to in-person presence, and introduces a painfully weighty moral dilemma for Jimmy to grapple with.

All the lines between good and bad and right and wrong are deliciously blurred, giving birth to soul-breaking decisions. Jimmy's troubled upbringing and family background come into focus, further enriching his quest.

The bursts of action are frequent and forcefully short, all delivered with calm coherence. Faster knows when and how to propel machinery, but is much more interested in the flawed drivers.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Rundown (2003)

An action-packed buddy comedy adventure, The Rundown (also known as Welcome To The Jungle) is mindless fun, and often much better than it has any right to be.

In Los Angeles, Beck (Dwayne Johnson, credited as The Rock) is a hard hitting but soft-at-heart "retrieval expert" (bounty hunter) looking to get out of the business and open his own restaurant. His boss Billy Walker (William Lucking) offers him one last job with a big payoff: retrieve Billy's wayward son Travis (Seann William Scott) from the wilds of the Amazon and bring him home.

Beck travels to the Brazilian jungle, connects with pilot Declan (Ewen Bremner), and finds Travis in the ramshackle mining town built by nasty businessman Hatcher (Christopher Walken) to exploit local resources. Travis has no interest in surrendering to Beck, as he is on his own quest to find the mythical El Gato de Diablo treasure, and trying to sweet talk bartender Mariana (Rosario Dawson) into helping him. Beck's assignment gets much more complicated when Hatcher demands that Travis lead him to El Gato's location, and Mariana reveals her own agenda.

A big budget production lavishly co-funded by WWE Films and directed by Peter Berg, The Rundown features Johnson relatively early in his transition from popular professional wrestler to action film superstar. The film celebrates its high ridiculous quotient, and locks into an action packed, irreverent groove.

The showcase fight sequences arrive at regular 10 minute intervals, with Beck's insistence that he does not use guns channeling the brutality into inventive one-against-many brawls. The multiple fracases are artistically choreographed and coherently handled, with an ever-present  shadow of a smile anchoring the flying bodies and flailing limbs. In an apt summary of the film's mindset, one fight scene finds Beck trapped upside down on a swinging rope in the heart of the jungle, his leg dry-humped by a crazed wild monkey.

As for the plot and the story, The Rundown is a combination buddy movie, treasure hunt, social justice comedy adventure. Enough disparate stuff is thrown onto the screen to ensure something kinetic is always going on, and Berg does not linger in any one place long enough for the preposterous attitude to deflate. The jungle colours are vivid, the settings teaming with sweaty life forms from both the human and animal kingdoms.

Seann William Smith's take on Travis is irritating enough to get under Beck's skin, and while Christopher Walken mails in his performance as prime evildoer Hatcher, his presence lends heft to the exploitation sub-plot. As for Johnson, he lumbers through the movie carving out his screen persona, a slightly more emotive Schwarzenegger without the accent but with a dash of vulnerable self-awareness.

The Rundown never wavers from its mission to deliver satisfyingly silly entertainment, and yes, for the final mop-up Beck does yield and pick up guns -- many guns.

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The Movies Of Dwayne Johnson

All movies starring Dwayne Johnson and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Rundown (2003)

Doom (2005)

Get Smart (2008)

The Other Guys (2010)

You Again (2010, uncredited)

Faster (2010)

Snitch (2013)

Pain & Gain (2013)

San Andreas (2015)

Skyscraper (2018)

Fighting With My Family (2019, as himself)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: San Andreas (2015)

A disaster epic, San Andreas is saturated with special effects and little else.

Los Angeles Fire Department Air Rescue Pilot Ray Gaines (Dwayne Johnson) is a devoted father to his daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) but going through a divorce from his wife Emma (Carla Gugino). Ray and Emma's marriage never recovered from the drowning death of their other daughter Mallory in a rafting accident. Now Emma is moving in with her new boyfriend, architect Daniel Riddick (Ioan Gruffudd).

A massive earthquake destroys the Hoover Dam, where California Institute of Technology Professor Lawrence Hayes (Paul Giamatti), testing his earthquake prediction algorithms, barely escapes with his life. Soon major earthquakes start to hit the coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Dr. Hayes does his best to warn people to flee the cities. Ray attempts to rescue his wife in Los Angeles, and then tries to find and rescue Blake, who is stranded in San Francisco with two brothers from England, Ben and Ollie Taylor (Hugo Johnstone-Burt and Art Parkinson).

Directed by Brad Peyton, San Andreas delivers exactly what it promises: mindless, methodical destruction on a grand scale, in many ways a re-do of 1974's Earthquake but with fewer characters and victims. Dams, bridges and buildings are knocked down with mind-numbing regularity, the CGI techs working overtime to create stunning graphics, equal parts awe-inspiring and science-defying. A narrow escape clocks in every ten minutes or so, and our hero Ray, his massive muscles flexing in synch with the earth shaking, does just the right thing at just the right second time and time again.

While watching computer-simulated scenes of devastation is fun, with the tsunami scenes particularly effective San Andreas is aggravating in every other way. Ray appears to forget about his profession entirely and focuses singularly on saving his wife and daughter. A brief perfunctory scene where Ray waves random people to the relative safety of a stadium wall is thrown in just to remind us that the man's job is supposed to be about helping others, not steal helicopters, cars and boats to save family members.

Worse still is the almost complete absence of suffering and mention of casualties. This is a film about the largest quakes in recorded history devastating two crowded cities. Yet hardly anyone dies, and the post-quake streets often appear to be conveniently deserted: plenty of debris and collapsed buildings, yet no bodies, no deaths, and only the most superficial of injuries. When the entirety of the Hoover Dam collapses, the event is shrugged off with a few "too bad" comments. No mention of casualties, and no follow-up related to the impacts of downstream flooding.

Added to the to-be-expected shallow characterizations and stiff acting, San Andreas' bloodless aesthetic enhances a level of plastic artificiality that is difficult to stomach. This is destruction as pure tourism, the equivalent of advertising-saturated glossy magazine imagery to ogle at, free from any meaningful exploration of repercussions.

San Andreas is superficial computer artistry devoid of emotional payoff, a childlike knocking-down of toys with no consequence.

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Movie Review: Doom (2005)

An adaptation of the revolutionary first person shooter computer game, Doom is mess of muddled action and bad science.

It's the year 2046, and there is trouble on a Mars research facility accessed through an "Ark" portal in Nevada. A group of Marines led by Sarge (Dwayne Johnson) and including Reaper (Karl Urban) are dispatched to investigate reports of carnage. At the research centre they team up with Reaper's twin sister Samantha (Rosamund Pike), who is one of the scientists conducting genetic experiments to replicate superhuman powers apparently perfected by an ancient but defunct civilization.

The Marines fan out and soon stumble upon murderous monsters with super strength. As the Marines sustain casualties, tensions mount and it becomes apparent that the infected dead can rise again and cause havoc. Sarge is determined to annihilate all living things before evil is transported back to Earth, but Reaper and Samantha want to be more careful about who to kill and who to protect.

The videogame Doom and its sequels reimagined what gaming can be, and became a worldwide phenomenon. Adapting a visceral first-person experience to the more staid movie screen was always going to be tricky, and the project predictably fails. Despite a fair effort from director Andrzej Bartkowiak, Doom the movie is often too dark, the action an incomprehensible blur, the monsters poorly defined. Too many minutes are burned with images of marines pointing their rifles and searching nondescript and poorly lit rooms, waiting for the next beast to emerge from the shadows.

Still there are flashes of promise. The film hints at an interesting backstory involving the parents of Reaper and Samantha. And placing siblings rather than an awkward attempt at a romance close to the centre of the story is a welcome touch. The discussion of genetics, chromosomes and pathways of evolution would have generated more curiosity in better hands, while the conflict between the follow-orders Sarge and the more conflicted Reaper does build up nicely.

But unfortunately the better moments are overtaken by repetitive forgettable firefights generating plenty of noise but clumsy, grainy visuals, and only the half-crazed Corporal Dean Portman (played with wild-eyed intensity by Richard Brake) registers from among the supporting cast of disposable Marines. Dwayne Johnson (credited under his wrestling name The Rock) and Karl Urban are all about muscular grimness, while Rosamund Pike, three years after her Bond girl debut, finds herself ankle deep in gore.

Late on, Bartkowiak captures the spirit of the game with a fun first person perspective sequence in which Reaper finally gets mad and embarks on a wild monster killing spree. Otherwise, Doom is dour, dreary, and dank.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Snitch (2013)

A muddled action thriller, Snitch tries to remain grounded but offers up an unlikely plot and makes poor use of a decent cast.

John Matthews (Dwayne Johnson) owns and operates a long-haul trucking company. Divorced from his first wife Sylvie (Melina Kanakaredes) and now married to Analisa (Nadine Velazquez), John is shocked when his son Jason (Rafi Gavron) is arrested on drugs charges. Jason was pressured into accepting a shipment by his overseas friend Craig, but is left with no recourse except a long stint in prison unless he helps convict other drug traffickers.

John strikes a deal with District Attorney Joanne Keeghan (Susan Sarandon) to infiltrate a drug gang and help arrest an important trafficker in exchange for Jason receiving leniency. John leans on Daniel James (Jon Bernthal), a new employee with a criminal record, to connect with violent gang leader Malik (Michael Kenneth Williams). John pretends to be financially stretched and offers the services of his trucks to transport Malik's drugs. Despite the help of Agent Cooper (Barry Pepper), John and Daniel find themselves in over their heads when Mexican cartel kingpin El Topo (Benjamin Bratt) is identified as the second party in Malik's transactions.

Directed and co-written by Ric Roman Waugh, Snitch makes some unwise choices. Dwayne Johnson is admirably cast in the central role, but is then asked to portray a relatively docile, by-the-rules character chafing about the injustice of a system ready to throw his son in prison for a relatively minor offence. All credit to Johnson for willing to stretch, but in this context he lacks the screen presence or ability to play a mostly anguished dramatic role.

Snitch then idles and waits for the best part of 100 minutes until John Matthews gets frustrated enough to pick up a shotgun, get behind the wheel of large truck, take justice into his own hands, and teach not one but two heavily armed gangs not to mess with an angry father. By then the film has been tied up in knots made up of rival nondescript bad guys, with small detours to the prison holding Jason and the domestic lives of John and Daniel to fill the time. Neither the script nor the performances of the willing cast are strong enough to build genuine empathy for the characters.

Susan Sarandon mails in her performance as a testy District Attorney. The rest of the cast bite into their roles but cannot overcome mostly stale lines and the overall absurdity of the premise and execution.

Snitch ends with an overdue bang, but by then it's the hollow sound of indifference.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.