A Good Day to Die Hard

Cast of Characters:

John McClane - Bruce Willis

Jack McClane - Jai Courtney

Yuri Komarov - Sebastian Koch

Alik - Rasha Bukvic

Mike Collins - Cole Hauser

Director - John Moore

Screenplay - Skip Woods

Rated R for violence and language

      John McClane is back! After four installments of watching Bruce Willis play the detective always winding up in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people, Willis returns to the iconic role that made him a mega-star in A Good Day to Die Hard.

      Unlike the previous Die Hard films, John McClane (Bruce Willis) winds up traveling to Russia. I can see the studio heads going cuckoo for cocoa puffs giddy at the thought of such potentially classic taglines like "Yippee Ki-Yay Mother Russia"... See what they did there? Anyway, after finding out his estranged son Jack (Jai Courtney) has allegedly ended up in some serious trouble overseas, father John decides to take matters into his own hands and rescue his son, and why shouldn't he? After all, he has taken down at least four terrorists before. This should be a walk in the park for him by now.

      Turns out though, Jack isn't quite in trouble like John thought he was. As a matter fact, Jack (See what I did there? I can come up with cheesy quotes too) is an undercover officer for the CIA... a surprising discovery to his father. Jack along with his partner Mike Collins (Cole Hauser) are attempting to achieve certain files from a whistleblower named Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch) which could potentially bring down certain, corrupt Russian officials. Those officials, though, aren't going down without a fight as they send their men led by Alik (Rasha Bukvic) to stop the McClanes no matter what, and that means forcing both father and son into committing death-defying stunts that shatter essentially every law of physics, and make you wonder how John McClane avoids being strapped to a gurney when it's all said and done.

      I was really looking forward to seeing this.  No one's a bigger Die Hard fan than me, and I loved the first four... Not so much with this one - okay, wait. Let me rephrase that. I thought this film was terrible. Notice my half-assed plot summary? Well, serves the film right for giving us a half-assed attempt at a Die Hard picture. For ninety minutes, I sat there disengaged, uninterested, and bored out of my mind. The last three things you wanna be feeling during a Die Hard movie - hell, any movie for that matter. The action sequences are over the top, even for Die Hard standards, there's no style or flare to them whatsoever and the story to begin with is mediocre at best. Also, the whole time I was watching the movie I kept wondering how inept does McClane have to be to not know his own son is in the CIA? I know CIA operatives - especially undercover ones - stay under the radar, and I know John McClane will never win "Father of the Year" and if I had him for a father, I'd certainly be in years of therapy, airing out my repressed feelings and cursing at how much of a deadbeat son of a bitch he always was... but for God's sakes. This is McClane's own son and he's a New York detective at that. How the hell are you that oblivious? My biggest beef, though, is the lack of a central villain. Hans Gruber, Colonel Stuart, Simon Gruber, and Thomas Gabriel (played by Alan Rickman, William Sadler, Jeremy Irons, and Timothy Olyphant respectively) were all a vital part of what made the first four Die Hard entries so great. They were intelligent, had intriguing motives ranging from money, to revenge, to cyber terrorism, and the back and forth between them and McClane was pure entertainment. With this installment, it seems like the film, more specifically the writer, didn't know who the central villain should be, so let's just throw a cluster of them in there and they can sort each other out. I'm sure I'll get those that disagree and give that "Well, in real life there's no such thing as a central villain." crap. Well, if this was based on real life, John McClane would've died years ago from whatever medical term you give to being splattered across pavement.

      It's a shame really that I have to trash a film that's part of one of the most consistently entertaining film franchises of all time. Do I think Willis still has it in him to give John McClane the proper sendoff that he's due? Absolutely, and I hope someday there will be one - with better writing and direction. This one ain't it. I give A Good Day to Die Hard a D (★).