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Skyscraper | 2018 | PG-13 | - 1.7.5
A retired FBI hostage rescue team leader and war veteran (Dwayne Johnson) works as a skyscraper security expert and while in Hong Kong the tallest building is set on fire, he is framed for arson and he must also rescue his family that's trapped inside the building. Also with Neve Campbell, Chin Han, Roland Miller, Noah Taylor, Byron Mann, Pablo Schreiber and Hannah Quinlivan. Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber. A few lines of dialogue are spoken in Chinese without translation and several lines are in Chinese with English subtitles; several characters speak with heavy foreign accents. [1:42]
SEX/NUDITY 1 - A man slaps his wife lightly on the buttock (both are clothed) and he kisses her goodbye. A man and a woman hug in three scenes; each says, "I love you" in the third scene.
► A few scenes show a woman wearing a V-necked blouse that reveals cleavage.
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VIOLENCE/GORE 7 - In a flashback, soldiers with assault rifles drawn enter a cabin with dozens of police cruisers outside and they find a woman and two small children cowering and whimpering in a corner and a man with his back to them; gun target beams shine on him and he turns around to show that he is holding a young boy as he cries, puts the boy down, and then detonates an explosive under his shirt that blows up in flames (we hear screams).
► A woman and a few men with assault rifles and handguns have a shootout in an alley at night with police: there is a lot of loud shooting that ends with several bodies on the ground (no blood is seen). Men fire pistols and assault rifles at other men near a helicopter pad on a skyscraper, a few men fall, wounded (no blood is shown) and one wounded man reaches his pistol on the ground and shoots through the windshield of a helicopter, killing the pilot and sending the helicopter into a wall, knocking several other men down before exploding loudly to fill the screen with flames. A man is shot off a motorcycle and falls, presumably dead. A woman and a few men enter a control room and shoot and kill at least eight people, who slump over their stations (a little blood is shown) and the woman shoots another man in the forehead, off-screen. A man points a handgun at another man and they fight with kicks, knee strikes, throws, punches and choking; furniture and a dishwasher break, glass breaks loudly, and a shelf falls over, one man grabs a kitchen knife and his opponent blocks knife strikes with a metal grid, they struggle over the handgun and one man is shot in the chest and he dies (we see a large dot of blood on his shirt begin to spread and some blood dribbles from his mouth).
► A man points a handgun at another man on a rooftop, another man draws a sword out of his clothing and slashes several men (we see blood on the sword) as hundreds of mirror-like projection screens rise from the floor and a lot of automatic rifle fire with sparking occurs; a few fistfights leave men unconscious, men fall against projection screens that crack like glass and a young girl is lost among the mirrors (she cries and shouts), a man is pulled off the roof when his parachute opens and the winds grabs him, two grenades explode loudly creating fires and a lot of smoke, a man is shot in the stomach (he survives and we see no blood), and another man limps between mirrors with a handgun drawn and finds a man holding a young girl and a hand grenade while pushing the girl toward a hole in the floor above a raging fire; the limping man kicks the other man into the hole and catches the girl.
► A woman on a walkway above burning trees is grabbed by an armed man and she shouts to her young son to run; she stabs the man in the thigh with a pair of scissors and he shouts in pain, letting her escape, and he then pulls out the scissors, slashes at her, misses, and she beats him in the face with her fists while another man punches the first man so that he falls, shouting, into a pit of fire below.
► A man opens a folding knife, cuts another man's arm through his coat sleeve and steals a briefcase; the second man falls and is helped up (we see blood on the sleeve and later on a bandage). Three people pursue a young girl around a waterfall and another man punches one of the criminals to unconsciousness; the other two people take the girl at gunpoint as she cries. A woman in the back of a car kicks the door open into a passing woman who jumps in and chokes the first woman, striking her in the face as well; the two women kick each other, and one woman chokes the other again until a police officer puts a gun to her head and the other woman kicks her hard in the face (we do not see any injuries). A man puts a gun to another man's head and the first man flips him over and pins him.
► Part of a concrete wall cracks and falls out in a boiler room and when a man looks in the hole we see an arm and hand come out to choke him followed by several men coming through the hole and pouring powdered fire accelerant to cover a floor of a skyscraper; a man lights a flare and sets a fire that begins with popping like fireworks, then whooshes up and explodes out one full side of the floor into the air as alarms sound and computerized announcements warn that a fire has started. A few additional floors erupt into flame and explode outward and someone inside turns off the firefighting mechanisms. We hear creaking and shattering as fires erupt and burn.
► A man climbs a metal cross beam on a crane base as police pursue him: he slips and regains his grip, he reaches the crane arm and moves hand-over-hand along the underside, and then chins himself up to the top of it, slipping twice and regaining his grip, he enters the cockpit, swings a large hook against a skyscraper, shattering a window loudly and hooking a cable into the opening; the hook falls out and police point rifles and fire at him (he is not struck). A woman walks a plank across a partially burned-out bridge in a hotel garden-park, while a man holds up the end of the bridge by cables; the woman grabs a young boy and falls when she begins to walk back, grabs the plank and the boy grabs her, and they jump to safety as the plank falls into tall flames. A woman and a boy enter an elevator car, a man chops the cable with an axe, and the car falls fast to below the fire line of the building; the woman pulls a lever and the car slows to normal speed before reaching the ground floor. Men shoot assault rifles through a room's walls and a man inside jumps out a window to land face down on pavement; a woman tasers him in the chest, he falls, and two other men steal his computer tablet. A man breaks a hotel window with a large object that loudly shatters the glass, then wraps duct tape onto his hands and shoes, ties a rope to the heavy object and around his waist, climbs outside and across windows and concrete and then rappels down a wall and jumps into a wind turbine where he cuts a wire in a control panel and the turbine explodes into flames; he swings between blades with the rope, hits a wall, and hangs upside down by his artificial leg, which comes loose but he grabs it and climbs through an open window. A man runs and jumps from a crane across empty space, catching an open window in a skyscraper by the ledge, he slips, then grabs it with the other hand and broken glass cuts his hands (we see some blood).
► A man finds a length of thin metal stuck in his shoulder, he pulls it out and we see some blood; he pours whiskey in the wound, places a towel over it, and duct tapes it into place with a grunt, covering most of a large tattoo on his shoulder and chest. An injured man on a gurney is shown with his face covered with black and red spots and both eyes are swollen shut. A man is shown with his legs splotched and scarred and one leg is missing below the knee; we see him put on an elastic cover and a prosthetic leg and we see him limp down a staircase. A man jams an artificial leg into electronic sliding doors to keep them from closing. A man and a woman have several red scrapes across their faces; his shirt is dirty and bloody. A man is shown with wounds from an explosion that include scars on his face and temple.
► Many people outside a skyscraper gather quietly, some wearing surgical masks, and watch from the street as a fire burns on one floor, and we hear a woman gasping occasionally; the crowd cheers as people are saved and small pieces of debris followed by large chunks of broken glass, metal, and concrete fall to the ground throughout the rest of the film (onlookers are not harmed).
► A floor becomes transparent, leaving a man appearing to stand in the sky above Hong Kong.
► We hear that a boy vomited in the recent past.
LANGUAGE 5 - 1 F-word, 6 scatological terms, 7 mild obscenities, name-calling (crazy, stupid, weird), exclamations (muck-up, wow), 6 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, Oh God, God, Thank God, Welcome To Heaven, Holy [scatological term deleted]). | profanity glossary |
SUBSTANCE USE - A man swallows an unknown pill from a prescription bottle, and a boy takes a long puff from an inhaler. A man pours whiskey from a small bottle into a shoulder wound, grunts, drinks from the bottle, drops it, and grunts again (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details).
DISCUSSION TOPICS - War, dangerous jobs, amputation, prostheses, recovery, starting over, family, loyalty, love, friendship, trust, betrayal, extortion, espionage, greed, international crime, multiculturalism, helping others, living a meaningful life, fire disasters, technology.
MESSAGE - A good husband and father will sacrifice everything for his family.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
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