Skyscraper Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

Downs...

5. The First Act Is A Total Mess

The movie certainly gets off to a rough start, with a jumbled, messy opening half-hour that tries to do too much too quickly while racing towards the fiery spectacle everyone paid their money to see.

It's as though writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber realised in post-production that he front-loaded his film with too many subplots, characters and scenes, and so shaved as much time away from each as he could without removing any of them entirely.

The result is a first act that inundates the viewer with an unnecessary flashback prologue, a ton of excessive exposition, dull family drama, outrageous techno-babble, double-crosses and death, and this is all before the actual disaster scenario properly kicks off.

This is all so frantic and sloppy that viewers might feel exhausted before the main attraction even begins, which is rather offputting.