A Good Day To Die Hard

This (the fifth film in the Die Hard franchise) should have been an attempt to either go out with a bang or at least attempt to arrest the creakiness that was abundant in Len Wiseman’s 2007 effort. How lessons haven’t been learnt. Basically everything that was wrong with Wiseman’s film (humorously dubbed “Die Soft” by the reviewers) is present and correct here, with the main problem being the complete overuse of CGI which renders the second half of the film an un-thrilling mess. As any TV or film fan worth their salt knows, as soon as you move the central character abroad it’s basically an admittance that the producers have run out of ideas. So now we have John McClane (Bruce Willis) travelling to Russia to help his son Jack (played by Sam Worthington lookalike Jai Courtney) avoid a prison sentence for something or other, though he soon finds himself mixed up in some terrorists’ shenanigans (natch). The film actually has a fairly decent start with a slow build up to an attack in a court room, but shortly after, once a bewildered Jack has almost run over his papa and exclaimed in complete surprise “Dad!”, you’ll sink back into your cinema seat as you know things are mainly going downhill from that point onwards. John Moore as the director is an odd choice, though I can only assume that the studio were going for the cheap option. Why else would you choose someone to direct an action film who hasn’t picked up the megaphone in five years and when they did it produced the critically panned Max Payne. The action scenes are silly (though there’s so much CGI I’m not sure you can even call them as being “directed” in the traditional sense), the chemistry between Willis and the bland Courtney is flatter than a week old glass of coke and the villains are so unmemorable I can’t even remember (or be bothered to look up) who the actors were portraying them. You may enjoy this if you like films that are all about computer generated mayhem and explosions, but if you’re asking for even the remotest bit of character development then you’re a Hans Gruber lifetime away. The good news for Wiseman is that this film now makes his effort look positively cutting edge, though I am reminded of the fall-out from Die Hard 4.0 when Willis said how disappointed he was when he heard the studio were hijacking the picture to give it a more gentle touch, but then, on seeing the finished film, said (completely unbelievably) he thought it was the best film of the series so far. Surely even he couldn’t say the same thing this time and keep a straight face.

The OC Film Sting Final Verdict

A Good Day Would Be Spent Not Watching This. Rating: 4/10.