A Good Day To Die Hard – Review

For fans of action movies, things don’t get much better than Die Hard.  The original film, released in 1988, is a classic which is often imitated.  A Good Day to Die Hard is the fifth installment in the franchise and it takes John McClane to Russia. The film was directed by John Moore and stars Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Yuliya Snigir, and of course, Bruce Willis.

In the film, McClane originally planned his trip to Russia so that he could check up on his delinquent son. He had just gotten word that his son was about to be sentenced in a Russian court to a lengthy prison term. Once in Russia the situation turns out to be a bit different than originally expected as his son is actually a CIA field operative.  Naturally, McClane gets pulled into the operation which leads to lots of shooting, explosions, and overall mayhem.

The essence of a Die Hard movie is that John McClane, an everyday New York City police detective, gets incidentally caught up in stopping some sort of major criminal activity. Unfortuneately, A Good Day to Die Hard doesn’t fit the bill as a Die Hard movie. Director John Moore completely missed the boat. There is still a lot of acton and witty comments from McClane, but that’s where the similarities end.

Helping undercover CIA agents stop the trafficking of weapons-grade uranium is not what Die Hard is about. Taking Die Hard out of the country was a mistake. Fighting side by side with a CIA agent is not what John McClane does. The almost constant sentimental talks McClane has with his once estranged son kill the overall tone of the film.

In Live Free or Die Hard, Justin Long as a sidekick worked well because he was an anti-McClane. He was young, scrawny, and brainy. He complemented McClane’s skills without stealing any of his thunder. In A Good Day to Die Hard, Jai Courtney almost seems to overshadow McClane in a lot of the action scenes.

Bruce Willis has talked about how he would like to finish up the Die Hard franchise with one more film to complete the saga at six titles. The notion of stopping at some point rather than continuing indefinitely is always appreciated. I’m just glad he didn’t want to stop after five because now the sixth film will allow for some Die Hard redemption.