Plot: In the fifth edition of the Die Hard franchise, erstwhile New York City cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) returns and this time he's gone international. After discovering his son Jack (Jai Courtney) has been arrested for a murder in Russia, McClane flies to Moscow to help his son. Unbeknownst to him, Jack is actually a CIA agent tasked with keeping political prisoner Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch) alive. Despite a bad relationship, John and Jack must work together to prevent a political upheaval in Russia and stop Viktor Chagarin (Sergei Kolesnikov) from taking power. But can Jack and John put their animosity aside long enough to "kill all the scumbags?"
Review: Oh John McClane, how far you have fallen. I remember when you were once just an ordinary cop put in an extraordinary situation in the original Die Hard. How times have changed.
Loud, obnoxious, obvious, and with little redeeming value, A Good Day to Die Hard is a sad addition to the Die Hard franchise and hopefully a bullet to the head for these movies.
I know there is a certain level of "suspension of disbelief" when it comes to films, but John McClane's situation in the fifth film strains suspension to the breaking point. What the hell was screenwriter Skip Woods thinking? John McClane preventing a coup in Russia? Ughh. Just make me walk over broken glass already. I use the word "script" in the loosest possible sense here because to me the entire story seemed like an excuse to do one action set piece after another. Full of convenient plot devices and the inevitable twist at the end, the story came across like it was written by a thirteen year old boy. There was actually one point where the bad guys used an aerosol spray to eliminate the radiation at a secret Chernobyl (don't ask) locker. Really? Were they out of magic pixie dust? And the dialogue? Putrid. After about the billionth time Bruce Willis said "I'm on vacation!" I was ready to hit the ejector button on my seat.
This was director John Moore's first film since 2008's Max Payne and it looks like he hasn't gotten any better in the last five years. I hate to bash a fellow Irishman but the pacing was frenetic, the camerawork atrocious, and he chose to revolve the "plot" around the action sequences instead of the other way around. Speaking of the action moments, while some were cool most were just ridiculous. Falling four floors (twice!) and not dying, crashing a helicopter into a building by hanging an ATV off the back of it, and having John McClane use a Hummer to drive over about twenty cars like he was at a monster truck rally, are just a few of the turd burgers in this movie.
Speaking of Willis to call his performance in A Good Day to Die Hard lazy and uninspired is an insult to sloths. I could almost see the dollar signs cha-chinging in his eyes every time he opened his mouth to spew out a ridiculous one liner. Willis didn't phone it in. He texted it in. Thankfully at least Jai Courtney was decent as an action hero although he displayed little emotions other than disgust, rage, or frustration. Unfortunately, even he couldn't save this movie.
I went in to A Good Day to Die Hard expecting to end the film yelling, "Yippie Ki-Yay motherfucker!" in delight. Instead I felt like saying, "Fuck this shit."
My rating 2/10
"Suspension of disbelief" was at, I thought, an apex in the last Die Hard, so I can only imagine...
ReplyDeleteEven if the movie is a steaming pile of crap, that poster is an all-timer. "Yippie Ki-Yay, Mother Russia!". Some may groan, but I think it's great. It's almost as if the whole movie was made to use that line...