¨The things
we do for our kids! Yippee Ki-Yay…¨
This is the
fifth film in the Die Hard franchise which began way back in 1988 when Bruce
Willis still had some hair. That movie helped Willis become an action star and
raised the bar for all action movies since. It also received four Oscar
nominations. None of the sequels have been able to match that same quality, but
at least they had a decent storyline and were overall pretty decent films. A
Good Day to Die Hard on the other hand not only does it not live up to the
franchise expectations, it kills it once and for all thanks to a terrible
script and some senseless action scenes. This film is all noise, but no
content. It is the shortest and by far the worse film of the franchise making
the 2007 sequel look like a masterpiece next to this one. A lot of things went
wrong with this film; first of all it was directed by John Moore (Max Payne,
The Omen) who in my opinion hasn’t directed a good movie in his entire career.
Second, the script written by Skip Woods is absolutely terrible with no story
whatsoever or any character development. Woods didn’t repeat the success he had
with the A-Team film which I found to be pretty funny and entertaining. Third
and perhaps the most fatal mistake they took John McClane out of the United
States and took him to Russia which is too bad because in the original film New
York was more like a character than a simple location. I am just so glad that
Nicolas Winding Refn decided not to direct this terrible story. He´s a smart
man. So far the 2013 releases have been pretty weak and A Good Day to Die Hard
wasn’t the exception.
For the first
time we get to follow our hero, John McClane (Bruce Willis) to a foreign
territory as he decides to travel to Russia on vacations in search of his
troubled son, Jack (Jai Courtney) with whom he hasn’t been in contact with in
over three years. Jack happens to be on trial for murder, but what his father
doesn’t know is that he is working as an undercover agent for the CIA. Jack is
on a mission to prevent a nuclear weapon heist and he is actually on trial to
try to free Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch), a political prisoner who claims to
have important incriminating evidence in a secret hidden file on a high ranked
Russian official named Viktor Chagarin (Sergei Kolesnikov). Jack is trying to
free Yuri before the corrupt officials get to Yuri and eliminate him in order to
get his hands on the file and prevent a nuclear war. This is when John arrives
in Russia and while he is getting to the courthouse to find his son he gets
caught in the middle of a gigantic explosion that is being led by Chagarin and
his men to try to intercept Yuri before he testifies. Jack manages to rescue
Yuri and they escape from the courthouse, but are being followed. John catches
up with them while they are being pursued and his son Jack is not too pleased
to see him. His father seems to have interfered with his plan to rescue Yuri
and the rest of the CIA officials have to cancel the extraction. Now they are
forced to work together in order to get Yuri to safety and find the file before
Chagarin and his men do.
Like in all
other Die Hard films we have plenty of helicopter explosions and a lot of
action, but we lack a true story. There is very little dialog in this film and
hardly any transition time from one action scene to another. That is why this
film is so short, there is no room for character development and the producers
don’t want us to think too much about the plot. Everything feels so rushed and
in my opinion John Moore has completely killed this franchise through this uninspired
script that they decided to work with. The film is very disappointing, loud,
and full of boring vehicle chases and explosions. Not even Bruce Willis has
enough charisma this time to save the film. Unlike in his earlier films where
his character, John McClane was a mere mortal who bled and got beat up, here
they make him look like a superhero who can´t be touched. There is no fun in
his character being an immortal, because what we liked about him in the first
place was his vulnerability and the courage he had to face danger despite
getting hurt. His character lacks personality just like this film does which
has been reduced to a bunch of noise and senseless twists. Skip this movie.
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