REVIEW: Skyscraper is another dodgy blockbuster where The Rock somehow saves the day

REVIEW: In Skyscraper, endearing he-man hero Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson gets in a fight with a building that has caught on fire. Can’t guess who wins? Then you need guessin’ lessons.

SKYSCRAPER (M)

Rating: Two and a half stars (2.5 out of 5)

Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber (Central Intelligence)

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han, Roland Møller, Noah Taylor.

A big man on a mission versus a big building up to something

You can apply any showbiz rule of thumb you like. The end result will still be the same : Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is the most popular movie star on the planet.

The indefatigably likeable man-mountain keeps churning out box-office blockbusters year in, year out.

In all honesty, a lot of them ain’t much good. You can often sense Johnson knows it himself.

Nevertheless, he always finds a way to make the seemingly mediocre somehow watchable.

The latest lunk-headed spectacle to benefit from The Rock’s one-size-plugs-all-holes screen charisma is Skyscraper, a ridiculously over-the-top knock-off of the Bruce Willis action classic Die Hard (30 years old this month, funnily enough).

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Neve Campbell, left, and Dwayne Johnson in a scene from "Skyscraper." (Kimberley French/Universal Pictures via AP)

The screenwriting math applied to Skyscraper’s sketchy premise never quite adds up, but that just doesn’t matter when Johnson is part of the equation.

The Rock’s principal co-star in this movie is The Pearl, a high-priced Hong-Kong high-rise repeatedly blabbed about as the world’s tallest building.

The Pearl is 200-storeys-plus of shiny steel and mirrored windows, the brainwave of a reclusive property developer who loves to remind everybody his pride and joy is “three times the size of the Empire State Building!”

Dwayne Johnson rappels down the side of the world's tallest building in a scene from film Skyscraper

As for The Rock, he plays Will Sawyer, The Pearl’s newly-appointed Chief Security Officer.

Will’s defining characteristics are that he has a wife (Neve Campbell) and two kids whom he loves very much, and the fact he lost a leg a long time ago when he was a soldier.

Both Will’s detachable prosthetic limb and his considerable combat experience are bound to come in mighty handy once the non-stop (and I really mean, non-stop) action component of Skyscraper kicks in.

On the eve of the Pearl’s grand opening, some enigmatically-accented foreign terrorists have started a fire on a mid-90th floor. A little ways above, the only current residents in the building are hopelessly trapped : the Sawyer family, sans Will.

Dwayne Johnson climbs a construction crane in a scene from film Skyscraper

With time running out and smoke pouring in, it is up to Will to scale the outside of the Pearl from street level, penetrate its impregnable fire security protocols, engage the enemy in several implausible running battles of wits and weaponry, and also save his nearest and dearest from burning to a crisp.

Once the movie gets on a roll - unleashing a new life-or-death situation every few minutes - both the laws of physics and the fundamentals of all human logic are shredded to a pulp.

And because it is The Rock continually crushing common sense into a tiny ball, you may not be able to wipe the smile off your face.

Dwayne Johnson and Neve Campbell in a scene from film Skyscraper