 The film received mixed reviews from critics, who praised Johnson's performance and the film's suspenseful scenes, but criticized the script as clichéd and too similar to "The Towering Inferno" and "Die Hard".Will Sawyer, a U.S. Marine war veteran and now an FBI Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) leader, loses his left leg below the knee when he and HRT colleague Ben Gillespie encounter a hostage taker with a suicide bomb.Ten years later, Sawyer is a private security consultant who, on a recommendation from Gillespie, is hired to review security for the world’s tallest skyscraper, Hong Kong’s 3,500 foot, 225 floor tower, "The Pearl", for owner Zhao Long Ji.