Skyscraper (1996).

I love a good “Die Hard in a ____” movie. The formula has worked for years in producing entertaining flicks in which one underprepared, ill-equipped hero has to deal with dozens of bad guys in an enclosed space. Films like Air Force One (Die Hard on a plane), Cliffhanger (Die Hard on a mountain), and Sudden Death (Die Hard in a hockey arena) were staples of my childhood that I still look upon fondly today.

Then there’s Skyscraper. Die Hard with tits.

“Well, excuse me for still believing in Sunday walks in the park, and little babies!”

- Carrie Winks

Skyscraper doesn’t really use the Die Hard “formula” as much as it just straight up rips off the whole movie and then bolts tits on top of John McClane.

In Skyscraper, a group of foreign terrorists led by a calm, eccentric break into a skyscraper, use the system to lock the place down from the inside, take a bunch of people hostage, and use their time inside to complete a heist. It’s even got an Ellis character (who begets the exact same fate), a Carl Winslow character (the “cop” who gets his first kill), the cop helping from the outside, people crawling through building vents, a scene where the hero rappels down the face of the skyscraper and kicks in through a window, and a heaping helping of 90’s clothing. Oh, and unlike Die Hard, we get some softcore pornographic scenes here (just highlighting Anna Nicole Smith’s breasts) and a super awkward attempted rape.

Anna Nicole Smith plays Carrie Wink, a Los Angeles helicopter taxi pilot who can plop her jugs out quicker than she can drool out accurate lines of dialogue. She’s a badass who can shoot (as we see in a flashback where she decimates six lined up beer bottles) but also can’t shoot (as we see when she misses twenty or so shots from a gun that holds six bullets while firing at a lumbering American Gladiator who’s equally inept with a firearm). She also really wants a baby, revealed in a subplot that goes nowhere.

“Some stupid, irrelevant Henry V quote that may have looked better on paper.”

- The bad guy

Her husband is Gordie Wink, played by Richard Steinmetz. He’s about as useful as an asshole on an elbow and just as smart. His reason for not wanting a baby is because she “works during the day and he works at night.” After his comedian partner gets roasted by a rocket, he’s ready for revenge, but is so terrible in combat that he’s simply saved repeatedly by others.

Her nemesis is Nakim, played by Calvin Levels. He’s a South African terrorist, hellbent on using stupid philosophical quotes before he kills people. He commands a team full of oiled up stock DTV mullet sporting white males who can’t shoot straight and one Whoopi Goldberg look-alike who also can’t shoot straight. They come armed with a million bullets and use every single one of them to shoot computers and stacks of paper. They fucking suck.

This movie is all kinds of stupid (we don’t even get into the skyscraper until 35 minutes in) but if there’s one good thing that came from Skyscraper it’s that there are a few good shots of people falling off of buildings. They definitely used their LAFD-giant-air-bag-for-stunt-doubles budget wisely. This was a direct-to-video offering in 1996 and it shows - contextual shots are doubled up (not 7 seconds apart), shot to shot inaccuracies are abundant (see below as the body lands on a car with 4 (!) different cuts that make no sense when woven together) and the dialogue is trash.

“Is this gonna be a shotgun wedding?”

- Carrie Winks

This isn’t trashy enough to be fun and not smart enough to be good. If you’re watching for Anna Nicole, just go look at her pictures online and save yourself an hour and a half. If you’re watching for any other reason…what’s wrong with you?

Here are some outtakes of Anna Nicole Smith, who seemed out of her mind while filming.