Review by Bob Ignizio
Bruce Willis returns as the seemingly
indestructible everyman John McClane in A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD
to try and mend fences with his estranged Jack (Jai Courtney). Jack
has been arrested for murder, and when dad sees him escape from his
trial along with dissident Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch), he stops
the boy to ask what's happening. Well, as it turns out, Jack is a CIA
agent tasked with bringing Komarov in, and dad has just screwed up
his mission. Now in order to escape the bad guys who want the file
Komarov has hidden away, they'll have to improvise. As any fan of the
series knows, that's John's specialty.
The
script by Skip Woods starts out looking like it wants to give the DIE
HARD series a modern
post-BOURNE makeover,
but those elements go by the wayside pretty quickly in favor
of more of the same with Willis taking considerable punishment but
always managing to get away and get the best of his enemies, tossing
off the occasional one liner as he goes along. The only real
deviation from formula are the clichés brought in from other movies,
like the ever popular son who resents his dad for always working too
much and never having time for him as a kid, who nonetheless has
grown up to be more or less just like his old man. Gee, think they'll
reconcile between the gunshots and helicopter crashes?
This
played out material isn't helped by John Moore's sloppy, indifferent
direction. He stages some pretty big and complex action set pieces,
including one that has to set the all-time record for a supposed hero
causing property damage and probable injury (and maybe even death) to
innocent parties, but none of it thrills like it should. Even Willis
seems to be phoning it in, and the rest of the cast doesn't do much
to pick up the slack.
Anyone
who regularly reads my reviews on The Cleveland Movie Blog knows I
have a soft spot for 80s action films and their stars. Even recent mediocre flicks from Stallone and Schwarzenegger get a passing
grade (just barely, but still passing) from me. Even with my standards being admittedly low, however, I expected more than that from Willis and the DIE
HARD franchise. This is a series that many
would say set the high water mark for eighties/early nineties action
films not just in terms of spectacle, but by actually being good
movies to boot. This is not a good movie. It's not even a mediocre
one. It's just bad, and more than a little sad. They should have called it "Die Hard with a Whimper". 2 out of 4 stars.
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