Skyscraper Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

1. There Are Way Too Many Characters

There are so many characters in this movie, and no real reason why. Considering the fairly swift pace and brief runtime, there are so many faces and names crammed into this thing, while very few of them have even cursory character development or names you're actually going to remember.

The most obviously unnecessary characters are Noah Taylor's security operative inside the skyscraper and Hannah Quinlivan's sexy assassin, the latter of whom just appears and disappears from the movie whenever it's convenient.

There are other examples: Pablo Schreiber's Ben feels like an afterthought and an utter waste of an incredibly talented actor, while a number of the Chinese police characters get a suspicious amount of time rattling off subtitled exposition, clearly aiming to appeal to the Chinese market.

Sure, it's set in Hong Kong and all, but these scenes still stick out like a sore thumb in a movie starring The Rock. By halving the sheer number of bodies in the film, it'd allow the remaining characters more time to breath and maybe, gasp, actually feel like real human beings.

Even with these big issues, the movie certainly isn't bad overall. Here's everything Skyscraper gets right...