McClane is here to save Valentine's weekend.
****
out of 5
97
minutes
Rated
R for violence and language
Twentieth
Century Fox Film Corporation
Is there any name more synonymous with action than John McClane? Well, maybe
at least as far as characters go. I even own the NECA Cult Figures action
figure and have the original Roderick Thorp novel (
Nothing Lasts Forever)
that started it all sitting on a shelf at home. Maybe it’s just me, but of all
the action series to come out of the ’80s, the
Die Hard films just may
be favorites. With a smartass attitude and McClane’s wrong guy in the wrong
place scenarios, Bruce Willis has provided us plenty of bang for our buck —
proving you can’t keep a good franchise down. While some may have had
complaints about the last outing, sighting
Live Free or Die Hard as too
broad and a bit on the Looney Tunes side, director John Moore proves that the
series, and himself, have plenty of adventures up their sleeves with
A Good
Day to Die Hard.
In Moscow, Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch) is set to stand trial. Jack McClane
(Jai Courtney) also has just gotten himself implicated after a shooting at a
night club and offers to testify against Yuri under oath. Meanwhile, John
McClane is in New York where he’s just been informed that his son has been
arrested. After John is dropped off at the airport by daughter Lucy (Mary
Elizabeth Winstead), complete with a copy of
Idiot’s Guide to Moscow,
Lucy begs him to not make things worse. John just wants to get to Moscow and
bring back his son. What John doesn’t know is that Jack has staged an escape
for Yuri and bad guy Alik (Rasha Bukvic) is hot on their trail. But it’s
one-liners, double crosses, car chases, gunfire, and explosions galore once
John gets caught up in the middle of things, and that’s just the way we like
it.
Willis seems to have more control over the director decisions having
hand-picked Len Wiseman for
Live Free and bringing on John Moore for
A
Good Day. While I never had faith in either of them — I can’t stand
Wiseman’s
Underworld series and Moore seemed content with his
continually bland brand of action (see
Max Payne,
Flight of the
Phoenix,
Behind Enemy Lines, and the abysmal
Omen remake) —
both have proven more than adequate in the ways of
Dying Hard. The
series sees even more changes this time around with less of the original
Michael Kamen musical cues and the scope ratio altered down too. The storyline
is pretty flimsy this time and the film relies so heavily on the father/son
dynamic that it should have been released on Father’s Day weekend.
Thankfully, writer Skip Woods (also unknown for great action films:
The
A-Team,
X-Men Origins: Wolverine,
Hitman,
Swordfish)
knows how to string along the action and like I said before, that’s why we came
in the first place. The film’s sense of fun keeps the pacing chugging along,
even if there are some lulls here and there which is really surprising
considering this is the shortest
Die Hard yet at a mere 97 minutes.
Courtney holds his own as McClane Jr. and I won’t be surprised to see him back
with Willis already letting on that a sixth installment is under way. If the
next one isn’t called
Old Habits Die Hard what else could they possibly
call it? While the action gods may be back in full force this year (Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone both have already failed at the box
office), leave it to McClane to make any day
A Good Day to Die Hard.
Photos courtesy Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
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