Chris Kavan's Movie Review of A Good Day to Die Hard

Die Hard with a Whimper
Chris Kavan - wrote on 02/16/13

Die Hard is arguably one of the greatest action films to grace the silver screen. It also helped propel Bruce Willis into the action hero stratosphere (something he hasn't been shy to capitalize on). While the films in the series have had their ups and downs, there is no doubt in my mind that A Good Day to Die Hard is the weakest entry into this series thus far.

Although there is plenty of action and some of that off-beat humor that made previous Die Hard films so fun, the main problem with this entry is two-fold: one - compared to passed entries, the villain is nowhere near as memorable (not even compared to Timothy Olyphant from Live Free or Die Hard) and two - the McClane clan is given even less to do and while Jai Courtney looks like he could be the son of Willis - besides looking the part, you don't really get any kind of connection between father and son. Granted, I know the relationship is supposed to be strained, but they could have made some effort.

That being said - the movie opens with a pretty impressive action scene. The HEV armored truck chase is a throwback that reminded me a lot of the T2 semi chase and the similar Terminator 3 construction chase. Other action scenes also get the blood pumping, including a couple involving a helicopter and a pretty amazing conclusion at the abandoned Chernobyl facility. Yet action can only take you so far - and though they are a lot of fun, it's simply not enough to make the film rise above a typical action movie fare.

A lot of the problem lies in the muddled story involving Russian politics, various factions and way too many "surprise" twists. Every time you root against someone - suddenly, there's a new bad guy you want to hate - unfortunately this trickery does not lend itself well to the series. I would rather they present a single bad guy to root against - it would have made things so much better - rather than try to shake things up.

Besides the issues with the villain - Good Day takes a lot of suspension of disbelief to get through. As one small example - no matter where Willis ends up, he always seems to find a gun (usually a comically huge one) just lying around to take out a dozen or so bad guys. Plus, I'm to guess that the Russian police force and/or military are non-existent or of the Keystone Kop variety, as the few who show up are pretty much killed right away and despite massive amounts of collateral damage (and a freakin' helicopter flying around shooting up stuff) they never intervene (other than to die immediately).

The film does little to make John McClane (or his son for that matter) and more well-rounded. In fact, it barely touches on any kind of personality other than "guy who likes to shoot bad guys real dead". I mean - if you're looking for a pure action film - it's pretty nice - but I was hoping for a little of that old Die Hard magic. Sadly, it seems Willis has joined Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in delivering an underwhelming action turn for 2013.