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David McK (3562 KP) rated Skyscraper (2018) in Movies

Jul 30, 2019 (Updated Jun 16, 2024)  
Skyscraper (2018)
Skyscraper (2018)
2018 | Action
There's just something by the (ex)Wrestler named The Rock, and his films.

Big, dumb action films for the most part.

And that, in my book, is a good thing.

In this, he plays a former FBI agent who is now a security expert (following his disastrous last mission, which cost him a leg) who must now rescue his family from inside a burning building in Hong Kong - the Skyscraper of the title, and the highest building in the world - while the local police believe he is responsible for starting the fire (he is, of course, being framed for the same).

I only saw this on the small screen: I can only imagine what the various vertiginous stunts would have looked like on the big screen!
  
Miss Bala (2019)
Miss Bala (2019)
2019 | Action, Drama, Thriller
Gloria (Gina Rodriguez), a makeup artist in Los Angeles, heads to Tijuana for a fun weekend with her best friend, Suzu (Cristina Rodlo). Gloria is going to help Suzu prepare for the Miss Baja California beauty pageant. They decide to head to a club to rub elbows with one of the more important judges, Chief Saucedo (Damian Alcazar). That is when a fun trip turns into a nightmare, several members of a local cartel, Estrella (Spanish for star), break in and start shooting up the club. The leader of Estrella, Leno (Ismael Cruz Cordova), believes that Chief Saucedo is trying to cut into his business and is there to assassinate him. Gloria escapes but gets separated from Suzu. She searches all night and calls the hospitals but can’t find her friend. She finds a police officer to have him help search and tells him he saw the attackers. Instead of taking her to the police station he delivers her to Estrella and Leno. He agrees to help her find her friend but there is a price. Now Gloria will have go to great lengths to find her friend and survive a deadly battle between a cartel and the police from right in the middle of the chaos.

Gina Rodriguez is really good in this film. I thought her performance was definitely the best part of this film. Otherwise the performances were a mix bag of good and bad. Cruz Cordova in particular failed to really come across as a scary, but sensitive, cartel leader. The cameo by Anthony Mackie was a surprise. The story is really interesting and there were times that were suspenseful. The action was decent with some good scenes. The issue was there were also some campy performances and scene set ups that felt rushed. The film was shot decently and the music fit well. The end, which I would not dare spoil, really fell short of all of the buildup.

Before looking for a trailer for this movie I did not know that this was a remake of a 2012 film of the same name. I would be interested to see this film to compare the two because I enjoyed the story. This film missed on some points but really did entertain me for the hour and forty-four minutes. I would say that you could save this for streaming or rental. I don’t think that it would be a movie I would watch again in the theater.
  
Cruel Acts (Maeve Kerrigan #8)
Cruel Acts (Maeve Kerrigan #8)
Jane Casey | 2019 | Crime, Mystery, Thriller
10
9.0 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
An exciting, beautifully written police thriller.
For someone, who in the past, has always said that they don’t like thrillers, police procedurals or anything vaguely in those styles, I’m not doing too badly at reading exactly those type of books lately. And I’m really enjoying them - this book in particular.

Considering that this is the eighth book in the series and I haven’t read the other seven (soon to be e was no confusion, and I didn’t feel as though I was missing out at all.

The lead character, Maeve Kerrigan, is a detective sergeant, and she has been put on the case of the retrial of Leo Stone. He had been found guilty of the gruesome murders of two women. However, a juror from the original trial has now made it known that THAT trial was prejudiced. Maeve and her partner, Josh Derwent, are in charge of re-examining the evidence. Another woman goes missing whilst Sone is in custody, though, throwing the whole investigation into doubt.

This is a seriously exciting book - there are cliff hangers all over the place (I had to stop reading from time to time to work, eat, sleep, parent, so the multiple cliffhangers may have been of my own making), and I loved how new evidence revealed. The main characters are immensely likeable, and those who are less so are so well described that you end up disliking them as well. The last chapters of the book also tense and exceedingly fast paced, that I felt as though I couldn’t breathe until the end! I was well and truly sucked in to the action.

I will be going back to the first seven books of this series to fill in my Kerrigan knowledge, and I’m looking forward to any future books in this series! This one comes highly recommended!