An Okay Day To Die Hard...

"I'm getting too old for this..."

Bruce Willis gets bored, you know? So he made another Die Hard movie. This time we see John McClane venture to Moscow (comedy gold already, right?) to find his son Jack, played by Spartacus' Jai Courtney, whom he hasn't heard from in years.

Assuming the worst (not kidding, the worst) of his son, good 'ol John wastes no time in finding trouble. This leads to the obligatory car chase, explosion scene, and hostage situation.

The problems start once you realize that the movie only really has two characters. Nobody else really needs a name. You've got John, and Jack. Everyone else is generic and kinda pointless. The movie centers around the banter between father and son, their attempts at comedy get a chuckle out of you every once in a while, but it often falls flat. John's one liners are also uninspired at best. His "I'm supposed to be on vacation" lines happen a couple of times too many, akin to Lethal Weapon's "I'm getting to old for this shit". Even the mandatory Yippee Ki-Yay moment feels phoned in.

Story wise, it isn't anything special. Bad attempts at plot twists don't really work because you only care about the two main characters, and even when it gets the chance to do something interesting the McClanes always seem to figure it all out surprisingly quickly, leading to more action instead of interesting storytelling. And honestly, that might not be a bad thing.

The action scenes are another story. Some of these segments are legitimately jaw dropping. The chase scene comes to mind, brutally over the top and quite entertaining. The stunt work is very well done, and the slow motion is used sparingly and it really works surprisingly well.

Ultimately a lack of memorable characters leads to nothing special. This is easily the weakest of the Die Hard films. That doesn't mean it's bad, just not good. There's no Hans Gruber to give you memorable bad guy lines, there's nothing to challenge running barefoot on broken glass. It just falls flat.

This probably won't be the last Die Hard. The way Hollywood works these days this will keep going. And of course, we'll watch them... We can only hope that they can once again find their charm and they stop with the ridiculous title puns.

Fine... The title puns can stay.

A Good Day To Die Hard... Who comes up with this shit?!


5.5/10