A Good Day to Die Hard
After 2007’s “Live Free or Die Hard,” I have to admit that I was looking forward to a fifth installment in this action franchise that focused in on John McClane, the New York cop played by Bruce Willis, and his attempts to reconcile with his children through saving the day by shooting shit up. Even with the tamer PG-13 rating, that movie had a story that kept us interested on the human level. This franchise had to make it work with an R-rating, right?
Not even close. The screenplay by Skip Woods gives McClane a flimsy excuse to go to Russia and try to reunite with his son, Jack (Jai Courtney), who ends up in a Russian prison. John fears the worst, but it’s not as simple as drugs or anything illegal– Jack’s a CIA agent who gets imprisoned in order to get dirt on a ruthless Russian official who has dark secrets involving a political prisoner (Yuri Komarov, played by Sebastian Koch) Viktor Chagarin (the official played by Sergei Kolesnikov) has had locked up for years. Sound complicated? That’s just in the first few minutes…after that, things REALLY get convoluted.
At 97 minutes, you would think that the movie would just move along with the type of action and comedy blend that made the first film and “Live Free” so enjoyable. Unfortunately, that couldn’t be further from reality. The director, John Moore (a Fox favorite who directed “Behind Enemy Lines,” “Max Payne,” and “The Omen” remake), lacks the energy and intelligent visual and narrative storytelling savvy John McTiernan brought to the original “Die Hard” 25 years ago, resulting in action scenes that, though plentiful, are also incomprehensible to follow, and pretty boring to watch. That’s where Woods’s screenplay really fails the newest entry in the McClane saga, since he doesn’t give us any of the human interest that snuck its way into the fourth film, and was the beating heart of the great first film. I’m not sure if McClane himself is ready to retire, but I can definitely tell you that I’m too old for this shit.
