Neve Campbell Goes Full-On Die Hard In Her Explosive, Big-Budget Action Thriller

By Jennifer Asencio
| Published 34 seconds ago

Neve Campbell is best known for the Scream franchise, in which she plays perpetual final girl Syndney Prescott-Evans. Although that character has been an extreme success for her, it was hardly her breakout role, as she was already well-known from the popular drama Party of Five and fellow teen movie The Craft. She backed off from her career in 2011 after making Scream 4, only appearing in a few TV movies and show episodes rather than major projects, until she returned to television full time in House of Cards in 2016. Her return to the big screen wasn’t a Scream movie, either: it was Skyscraper, a 2018 action disaster film starring Dwayne Johnson.

Obvious Influences, But Keeps Its Own Identity

If you take all the best parts of Towering Inferno, Die Hard, and The Mummy Returns, and mix them all together, what results is this action vehicle that was really meant for The Rock, but gave Campbell some action-hero cred as well. They play married couple Will and Sarah Sawyer, who met when Will lost his leg in a hostage encounter and Sarah was the military medic who treated him. 10 years later, they are married with two children and a successful security consulting business that has been hired to review a tech-loaded Hong Kong residential skyscraper called The Pearl. Will, Sarah, and their two children head off to fulfill the contract and live in the building in the meantime.

When terrorists try to obtain control of the building’s tech systems to obtain sensitive data about an organized crime syndicate, Will goes to hell and back to rescue them. That includes scaling a burning building, fighting off terrorists, and dodging police who’ve mistaken him for the instigator of the attack. Can Will survive and rescue his family? Will the terrorists get what they came for? Where there ever be enough duct tape in the world?

Action Grounded By Its Characters

The reason I threw The Mummy Returns in with two movies that obviously reference large buildings threatened by fire and criminals is that this movie really is a family film. Campbell and Johnson work well together as a couple in Skyscraper, and are obviously good parents to their kids. When the going gets tough, Sarah is as capable as her husband, if not as strong, and exactly the kind of woman he would believably marry. She’s not a super-woman. The terrorists she manages to subdue with a nice judo throw, she has to disable first. She’s not beating up big guys, but rather using her wits and their own strength against them. Johnson is all fatherly devotion, bringing to mind the classic adventure couple of Rick and Evie O’Connell.

But the movie is more about Will and his struggles to get to his family. The Rock’s performance is complicated by his character’s disability, which the production never lets us forget about by hobbling the actor so he has to hop around on one leg when the character isn’t wearing his artificial one. He is vulnerable, but in a way that doesn’t diminish him as a man. He isn’t submissive or cowardly, especially when it comes to his family. The Rock dissolves into the role, and sometimes you forget you’re watching the famous pro wrestler and not his character.

If there is any problem with this movie, its that Will is sometimes superhuman, doing things that nobody could do, even with two whole legs. Some of his stunts are unbelievable and obviously CGI, but if you roll your eyes and get past these scenes, the action and chemistry between the characters delivers. Navigating through the burning, collapsing building, the danger is mostly from the setting itself rather than the bad guys, giving both Johnson and Campbell a lot of room for heroics that don’t involve violence. The movie leaves the violence to the terrorists.

Campbell’s return to the big screen met with middling ratings, but the movie showcases her versatility and growth as an actress going from young adult sensation to action-mom. It’s a great popcorn flick the whole family can enjoy together without too much to hide the kids’ eyes from. A few people do get shot or blown up, but the carnage is mostly contained and not gory.

Best of all, Skyscraper is currently free on Tubi. Check it out on your next movie night!