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Friday, March 29, 2024

Review: A Good Day To Die Hard – 5 GPP

Straight to the Point: Some decent action and can be fun, but doesn’t come close to the quality of any of the other Die Hard movies, making this the worst film in the franchise.

 

Warning: The following includes some minor spoilers.

John McClane is back! I’ve always been a fan of the Die Hard films, especially the first one, which really raised the bar for action films and also featured an action hero, played by someone who could actually act. I also loved the second one and I remember watching for the first time as a kid; my dad was watching it with me and explained how unlikely it was that, McClane would make it through a similar situation to the one in first film again. Well, now he’s doing it for the fifth time and I wonder what he would say now.

This time the setting has changed to Russia, where John has gone to find his estranged son. All he knows is that he’s in jail and presumes it’s related to delinquent behaviour,  but as it turns out he’s a CIA agent on a mission to protect a witness from some serious villains. As John arrives outside the courthouse he thinks his son may be in, he soon finds out that yet again, he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time when everything around him suddenly blows up. It’s then that he knows it’s his cue to get involved; so he does of course. 

 

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This film features the following things, which you might expect from a Die Hard Film:

Explosions, gun-fights, car chases and helicopters – The action side of this film is pretty good. If you like to see a good explosion, then you’re in for a treat as almost everything seems to blow-up throughout the feature. The action is quite unrealistic: not that that should really bother you in a film like this and it’s not as unrealistic as taking out a helicopter with a car or jumping on to a jump-jet and hanging on, as seen in Die Hard 4.0. In case you think, at any point,  that the action isn’t as good as in the original film, then they’ve added in a jumping-through-a-window scene too; also a jumping through a glass roof, just in-case the window alone didn’t do it for you.

A family member, John needs to save  As I’ve mentioned above, this time he sets out to help his son. It turns out that he can handle himself pretty well and has taken a lot after his dad, but he can still use a bit of help from the man who has already been through this sort of thing at least four times before. Of course, his son does have a lot of resentment towards him for not being around much while he was growing up. Typical, as in all the Die Hard films, he spends all of his time trying to save his family but they never really appreciate it, because it seems that they would rather that he took them to the zoo or a baseball game instead of being a hero. The father and son dynamic works pretty well and you can see how they get to understand each other better and their relationship develops throughout the film. Also, the funniest dialogue occurs between these two characters.

 

But it lacks heavily in the following things, you would expect:

 Strong Villains –  There are few villainous characters in this film, but none of them are very menacing. The first film’s Hans Gruber, played by Alan Rickman is a tough act to follow but none of the villains in this film come anywhere close. After capturing John McClane and son, one of them gloats about it while eating a carrot. A carrot? Is that meant to be threatening? If so, in the Looney Tunes cartoons, Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam would have stayed well away from Bugs Bunny. He’s the most threatening of the villains too so I’ll say no more on this.

Tension –  This is where I feel the film is lacking the most. I think the main problem is that there’s no real immediate threat. No hostages or a bomb, which could detonate, destroying a city at any moment and only one scene, where John is compromised and allows himself to be captured; and even then you know that he’s going to break himself free, smack the bad guys in the chops, steal their weapons and blow them away. You never really feel worried for any of the characters because John always escapes gunfire and kills the enemy with no real effort. Sometimes you may believe that you’re watching a video game rather than a movie, as he makes it look that easy; it’s like he’s gone through this sort of thing before or something. Most conflicts are dealt with by gunfire but it could do with the odd punch up too.

 

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The writing generally feels quite lazy, with characters just bumping into each other, with no plot devices to get them there. The story is very predicable it times; however, there is a twist, which is unusual in Die Hard, although, it’s not a highly original one. The final scene feels  rushed too and there  isn’t much of struggle before McClane and son save the day leaving you feeling a bit cheated. In an action movie the story isn’t everything but as most of everything else is missing so a better story would have helped

 

The director, John Moore is best known for remakes such as The Omen but he is also responsible for Max Payne, which made me wonder if he’s ever watched the previous Die Hard films as he certainly didn’t play the Max Payne games. To me, he seems to be the wrong choice to keep this ailing franchise going.

 

Bruce Willis doesn’t disappoint though; he shows he’s still got it and his time is not up yet but this film shows that the Die Hard franchise’s time is most certainly up. In my opinion, it was up  after Die Hard 2: Die Harder  but some may argue that it was over after Die Hard with a Vengeance as it wraps up the story and it was always intended to be a trilogy. Either way, it’s clearly up now.

 

Phil_Matthews
Phil_Matthews
I'm a 35 year old, self-confessed media junkie from London. I currently work as a tester in digital media (some say I get paid to watch telly) and also worked as a games tester in the past. I also spend a lot of my spare time watching films and playing video games. Thankfully I have a very understanding wife, who allows me time to do so.

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