Skyscraper
Skyscraper
R | 29 February 1996 (USA)
Skyscraper Trailers

A helicopter charter turns deadly when the pilot finds that she is on a building held by terrorists. It is up to her and her husband to save the hostages.

Reviews
BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay
Aedonerre I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.
DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.
Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
ComedyFan2010 I am actually a fan of bad low budget movies as they can bring some special entertainment than not well made movie ever can. This is one of those movies, and so I rate it accordingly to the C (or D? )movie genre.It takes the big hit of that time, Die Hard, and makes a hilarious, action filled version of it. It is here to please both men and women. Men will appreciate the view of some humongous boobs and women get a main action hero to be female and a bunch of male terrorists who look like they could be pron stars themselves only not too much gets revealed, we just enjoy watching them running in their leather pants and tank tops revealing their muscles.The soft core pornography scenes are both erotic and funny. The first one with the shower was pretty good, the other one which is Carrie's daydreaming about banging her husband is extremely hilarious. I mean, when one is trapped with terrorists in a skyscraper what can be a better thing to do than dreaming about banging your husband in some hay, right?.Anna Nicole Smith was a beautiful woman. But in this one she looks kind of weird. I mean what is it that she kept on doing with her mouth? Was it just a bit dysfunctional after some plastic operation or was it her special acting technique? I have no idea, I just wished she would stop.Acting in this movie was not of very high class. I am not even talking about Anna Nicole Smith who was the worst. Her "emotions" or better yet the total lack of them was hilarious. The rest of the cast is you see was with few exceptions not even really active in acting. Most of them have only a few credits on their IMDb lists. So this movie's acting looked very amateurish, which by the way didn't bother me too much. It looked like a bunch of people had some hell of a fun while doing it. And it seems they were not really trying to go for better acting, maybe they even tried to make it worse. Nobody was trying to hide that Anna Nicole was obviously reading most of her lines without giving them much thought, it seems if she wanted to at least act a bit, she would. I have watched actual porn where actors acted better between sex scenes. This seems like it was for our entertainment.The plot has so many holes and unexplainable things to it that I won't even bother. The dialogue is hilarious, because of how badly it is written.What they did well with, I must say were the action scenes, if we take into the account it being a low budget film. No I am not talking about the funny looking fighting scene when Anna Nicole does some weird sort of kung fu or whatever it is, or when the stud terrorists run shooting from their guns holding them in a way that makes it impossible. But the scene with the truck and explosions is wonderful. I must say they also add a lot of excitement to the movie.So I rate the movie above average but not much further because it made its job to give me great entertainment as a bad movie, but yet I have seen so many others that were even more crazy and ridiculous that this one will not be sticking in my memory so much.
Comeuppance Reviews In the pantheon of action stars that perhaps should not have become action stars, a few names come to mind. Judge Reinhold. Steve Guttenberg. Jay Leno. Steven Seagal. Now we can proudly add to that storied list Anna Nicole Smith, who was the obvious choice to stand in for Bruce Willis in a classic 90's Die Hard knockoff (or "DieHardInA" movie - see our review for Sudden Death to see a comprehensive list). Of course, usually a DieHardInA movie takes the Die Hard template and moves it to a certain location, like a water treatment plant or a hockey game. Here, it's Die Hard in a...building. How they ever got the idea to put this plot line in a skyscraper, we'll never be able to figure out. But that's the issue: this is really just standard fare, with only the novelty of the Anna Nicole stunt casting to set it apart. So it really doesn't matter that the action was moved from a skyscraper to a skyscraper (as if we, as viewers, were having trouble understanding that, they felt the need to call the movie Skyscraper). It wasn't the location that needed to be changed, it's the star. Instead of a water treatment plant, they got Anna Nicole.Anyone who is familiar with PM will recognize their hallmarks here: well-done blow-ups, plenty of gun-shooting, rocket launchers (this time with "rocket vision"), an exploding helicopter, and a familiar cast and crew of regulars such as Raymond Martino and fan-favorite Malibu (AKA Deron McBee). McBee looks so feminine here, when he fights Anna Nicole, it's kind of hard to tell who's who. Perhaps that's why they made his long, flowing mane brown instead of its usual blonde, as one of the sole means of differentiation. He and his other main terrorist partner certainly dress for success: rather than wearing fatigues or something like that, they wear leather pants and man-blouses.Seagal and Anna Nicole do have many things in common: they both struggle with their acting, they both struggle with their action scenes, and they're both pleasantly plump. If they ever had a baby, the results might be along the lines of Beverly Hills Ninja. But without the talent of Chris Farley. To be fair, though, these were the pre-Trimspa days. While we do have to wait a while for it, we do get some Anna Nicole-Fu. Before that, we get some Skinemax-style nudity/sex scenes (mentally take yourself back to 1996. If you rented Skyscraper and the nudity factor wasn't there, you would feel wicked cheated. However, "look not through a knothole, lest ye be vexed" as what nudity there is is more freakish/odd than hot), and plenty of inane dialogue such as "I got a bad feeling about this!" - though, to be fair once again, someone does say the time-honored classic "We got company!", which we always notice.So while it was the 90's - the era of pagers - computer graphics in the movie really do resemble Pong. We know it was low-budget, but come on. We think the Zitex Corporation (is this where they create zits?) can probably do better. But the bottom line is, we all know why we're here. For the freakish novelty of Anna Nicole Smith in a PM action movie. If that's something you think you can handle, by all means, take a ride on Heliscort (who comes up with these names?) and have some fun with the so-bad-it's-goodness.
Jim 1) To be in the cast, you had to have an asymmetrical face.2) The computer props were originally used in "Desk Set." 3) When the crotch in the guy's jeans split wide open, it was barely noticeable. Really.4) Anna Nichole's son had no idea he was being used as an homage to "The Shining". 5) Nobody else involved knew that either.6) International Male sales exploded when this movie was released.7) Somebody LOVED high school French class.FYI - Comcast info gave this movie 2 stars. I would love to find out what exactly warranted that extra star. And if anybody has any information on the behind the scenes story of this meisterwerke, please let me know.
gridoon ...is something around a "5 out of 10". If you take Anna Nicole Smith out, it is a decent action film, with nice explosions, respect-worthy stunts (people falling from great heights or being burned alive), and a few surprisingly solid martial arts fights with Branko Cikatik. And yet until today more than half of the 700-something people who have voted on "Skyscraper" gave it a "1" - obviously because of ANS (and quite a few people gave it a "10" - again, obviously because of ANS). Yes, her acting is on a high-school play level, and her grotesquely over-sized breasts are a matter of taste, but you can't say that she doesn't make an effort. But if you're thinking of getting this movie just to see her nude, don't - the two sex scenes run a total of 5 minutes in a 90-minute movie and feel like they were added in post-production (and in what might be an attempt to keep the ladies happy as well, the film includes a fair number of hunky males in it - seriously, these terrorists might have a more profitable career as fitness models). Overall, this is about on a par with ANS's other film, "To The Limit"; take that as you will. (**)