‘A Good Day To Die Hard’ Review

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A Good Day to Die Hard is the fifth installment in the Die Hard series.  But other than Bruce Willis’s presence as a character named John McClane there’s almost no resemblance between this movie and its predecessors.  Gone is the idea of a contained setting (Die Hard and Die Hard 2), the notion of one man saving the day (Die Hard, 2, 3 and 4) and the idea that this is a story relevant to Americans — the action takes place in Moscow in some kind of strange netherworld in which the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown is still big news (it happened in 1986).  Not only is this sequel set overseas, which is a bit of a let down, but it’s also centered around an event from decades ago, a topic that is unlikely to resonate with the target audience. The best thing about the movie is probably Bruce Willis who looks pretty good for 57, considerably more charismatic and spry than his two 80s action counterparts, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, both of whom recently crashed and burned in their comeback vehicles (The Last Stand and Bullet to the Head). 

It was probably a good idea to mix up the formula for the fifth go around and to that end this story is a two-hander which sees the aging New York detective partnered up with his son John “Jack” McClaine JR. played convincingly by up and coming Australian actor Jai Courtney (Spartacus: Blood and Sand), recently seen in Jack Reacher.  McClane Senior travels to Moscow to bail Junior out of a Russian jail only to arrive at the exact moment that his son has planned an explosive escape in a heavily guarded courthouse.  Turns out Junior works for the C.I.A. and was in prison on an undercover assignment.  Dad’s arrival causes Junior problems but rest assured he sets things right by the movie’s end.  Forgettable plot centers around the hijacking of uranium from the Chernobyl meltdown site.  There is a fairly gripping car chase that apparently took four months to shoot and the action sequence overalls are well executed.

There should probably be a law in Hollywood outlawing anything beyond ‘5’ in a franchise.  But A Good Day to Die Hard will no doubt open to decent numbers at home, given the hook of the franchise,  and even better box office overseas, given the high demand in foreign markets for a known quantity such as this, ensuring that we probably haven’t seen the last of John McClane.  There is a short scene at the start of the movie between the rugged hero and his teenage daughter Lucy, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead (introduced in Die Hard 4).  Is this a teaser?  Perhaps if this father-son installment is a big success we can look forward to some father-daughter shenanigans in Die Hard 6: Shop Till You Drop.