A Reel Review: A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD

 

Director John Moore had to accomplish two things when putting A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD, the unasked-for fifth installment in the DIE HARD series. First, he needed to make a film which feels right at home in the established DIE HARD universe, with the wit of the main character and the wow of the action pieces. Second, he just had to make a good movie which entertains.

John McClane (Bruce Willis) travels to Russia to aid his incarcerated and estranged son Jack (Jai Courtney) who is being charged with murder. Once there, McClane discovers that Jack is actually a CIA operative caught in a web of espionage.

It doesn’t take long to realize that A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD just isn’t very much fun. The first act grinds away slowly and painfully as it unloads a convoluted mess of a plot involving secret files, a Russian scientist, and a spin on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. For as much plot as they lay on, exactly what the big deal is about what the villains are after is never really made clear, and right away the threat our heroes are supposed to be fighting against seems non-existent.

Things don’t get much better once John McClane enters the story. McClane spends the entire film complaining how he’s supposed to be “on vacation” (a line he says about a billion times), which makes absolutely no sense since he was in Russia on the serious matter of his son being in a Russian prison. Once father and son get together and start avoiding gunshots and explosions, the film goes into cringe-worthy territory with shitty and forced dialogue, massive leaps in logic and characters just doing stupid things which make no sense and is often contradictory to the grand scheme of things.

John Moore’s directing style can be described as nothing short of a diarrhea explosion, because he just crafts a shitting mess here. The action scenes are so choppy it almost seems like they didn’t shoot enough footage on set. There is no sense of danger or dread and feel very un-inspired and un-creative. There is nothing special about this action film because it’s all gunfights; over and over and over again. It gets repetitive and dull.

Bruce Willis seems perfectly matched with Jai Courtney because they both seem like they are sleepwalking through the film. They are dull and wooden, have no charisma or chemistry together, and give no reason for us to care if the father-and-son angle ever plays out. Both characters are written weak, and the actors don’t seem to care.

As a DIE HARD movie, the film fails miserably as it has no energy or fun, no wit or charm, nothing to enjoy, and the onus is oddly never on McClane to save the day. As an overall movie is fails harder as it is poorly written, poorly directed, stupid and boring. This is bush-league filmmaking at its worst. Fuck this movie forever.

BOTTOM LINE: Fuck it