Few film franchises have made it to five films, and I can’t think of many action movie franchises that have made it to five films without the last few sequels making it out as low-quality direct-to-video movies. Yet Bruce Willis is still going strong with Die Hard, starring for the fifth time as wiseass supercop John McClane. While A Good Day to Die Hard is an acceptable entry to the franchise, it won’t convince newcomers that John McClane is one of the greatest characters in film history.
New York City police officer John McClane (his current rank goes unmentioned in this entry) finds out that his estranged son, Jack (Jai Courtney) has been arrested in Russia for murder. The elder McClane travels to Russia to see if he can help out his son in any way when he discovers that not only is Jack a covert CIA operative, he doesn’t want anything to do with his old man. However, Jack soon finds that his mission to extradite government whistleblower Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch) is more difficult than he realizes, and that his trigger-happy father offers him the best chance of completing the mission and getting out of Russia alive.
At 97 minutes, A Good Day to Die Hard is the shortest film of the series by a wide margin (the next shortest, Die Hard 2, is nearly a half hour longer). What’s mostly missing from the movie is character development. Sure, by film number five the John McClane character has been well established, but on the other hand we don’t know his son much beyond the whole “You were never there for me Dad, so I call you by your first name” thing, something you know he’ll get over in time for the climax.
Yet Courtney as Jack makes a far better sidekick than Justin Long‘s computer hacker from 2007’s Live Free or Die Hard — in fact, Jack is effectively presented as his father’s equal in all but experience, establishing the “legacy character” far better than other “passing the torch” movies like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In addition, what makes this installment unique is that McClane is completely out of his element not just in Russia but in this mission. Jack’s meticulous CIA planning is the polar opposite of his father’s unpredictable style. It puts the estranged duo even more at odds, and like most “buddy cop” type movies they have to learn to trust each other first.
It’s a shame then that Willis seems to be going through the motions. While this film follows the typical “day in the life” plot of the Die Hard series, the John McClane character from the original brilliant 1988 film is virtually unrecognizable from the 2013 McClane. The McClane in the original film was a vulnerable everyman, but over the course of four sequels has become an invulnerable superman. Even the clever quips, which were such a signature of the John McClane character, seem a bit forced, especially since he uses a variation of “this is supposed to be a vacation!” a half dozen times. Now, Willis going through the motions still puts the action at a higher level than most action movies, but since this is a Die Hard film I expected more. Then again, each time we go back to the Die Hard well the sequels get further away from what set the original apart in the first place.
Perhaps the culprit is the run-of-the-mill plot. Though I like the fact that the film removed McClane from the United States, the plot seems almost too pedestrian for a Die Hard film. Nonetheless, it’s probably the best script Skip Woods has ever written, but considering he wrote mediocre films like The A-Team, Hitman, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine that’s faint praise. Similarly, this is director John Moore‘s best film — his previous credits include Behind Enemy Lines, Flight of the Phoenix, and Max Payne — and while he brings the film above the level of a generic action movie, it really isn’t much of an improvement over Live Free or Die Hard. One example is that Woods and Moore couldn’t seem to think of another way to get the McClanes out of a sticky situation than by jumping out of a window or from a great height — seriously, there are at least four “jumping from a great height” sequences in this movie. A stronger creative team would’ve probably brought this sequel to a higher level of quality, but perhaps 20th Century Fox didn’t want to tamper with what has so far been a very lucrative franchise.
Willis has said in interviews that he’s planning to star in a sixth Die Hard movie. I can’t imagine getting that worked up about it at this point, which is a shame considering how good the original is. Still, A Good Day to Die Hard does it’s job in giving a reliable dose of action. Problem is, a Die Hard film should really be more than just reliable.
Rating: Not one of the best of John McClane’s adventures, but Willis and Courtney make a great pair (5.5/10).
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