A Good Day To Die Hard

I'm going to make this a short review, because Die Hard and John McClane need no introduction. To be honest, I can only take my personal feelings with this, as Im not sure what the general view here is. As far as I see it, The first two Die Hard movies are classics. The 3rd is a bit naff, and a lot of people moaned about the 4th, but a lot of people liked it. I loved the 4th one, brought John Mc Clane kicking, screaming and shooting people in the face back into the public eye. I was slightly indifferent to this one from the trailer. And I was right to be.

This movie kicks off with John being told his son is in Russia and hes been arrested. So John flies out there. Then for the rest of the movie, he calls it his vacation. Almost as a way for us to hear John moaning about being in the wrong place, wrong time, as is par the course for a Die Hard movie. Turns out his son is CIA, we learn this early on so no spoiler here. Id have thought though, as a cop and you know, father to his son, John would be privy to this information. But he isn't. So there we have something for him and his son to discuss, throughout all the "killing of scumbags".

And that's one of the main issues I had with this film. John McClane is a wrong place, wrong time cop. Not a scumbag killer or a vigilante. In every other Die Hard, he kills scumbags because its kill or be killed. Here, he actively says it, and him and his son say it, several times. Lets go kill some scumbags! Really John? Is that what its come to?

Plot withstanding, of which is basically poorly written, the action scenes here are decent. Lots of cool shiny action scenes and things blowing up. Which I think for some people is enough. But you know, I remember characterization in Die Hard films. They were not just dumb action movies. They had excellent characters, Villains you really wanted John to take out by the end. And that's another thing this movie lacks, a great bad guy. There's no Hans Gruber here. The plot of this movie rushes along so fast, and is so poorly constructed that the motivations for the bad guy, and the build up to his plot is basically pointless. Its not necessarily short, but it flies by and nothing really happens except for John and his son Jack killing bad guys for the sake of it. Some people are going to like it for all the reasons I disliked it. But then, I doubt they have seen the first 4 films.

I would be very surprised if this doesn't kill off the franchise dead. A true disappointment.