A Good Day to Die Hard
2013
Director: John Moore
Starring: Bruce
Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Yuliya Snigir, Radivoje Bukvic, Mary
Elizabeth Winstead, Cole Hauser
Rated R
97 minutes
We’re not a hugging
family.
~John
“Jack” McClane Jr
Let’s start out like this.
From the writer of X-Men
Origins: Wolverine, Hitman and Swordfish.
I know. How can you
contain your excitement?
With that on the table, it should come as no surprise that A Good Day To Die Hard clocks in as an
absolute disaster and outright failure.
That this is a film in the beloved Die
Hard franchise makes it hard to stomach.
Bruce Willis shows up for a paycheck in film that seemingly goes out of its
way to make the viewer dislike it.
A token amount of plot: The fifth way that John McClane gets himself in the wrong
place at the wrong time is in pursuit of his son. John has to go to Moscow to find his son
Jack. Jack is in prison for an
assassination attempt he claims he was ordered to execute from Yuri Komarov, a
political prisoner set to stand a trial in which he will expose high ranking
official Chagarin. But Jack is a US
secret agent hoping to get close to Yuri to exchange his incriminating
information in exchange for Yuri’s escape to safety. John McClane gets mixed up in this by showing
up at the right time, having to team with his resistant son in order to
complete the mission.
Things just feel off right from the get-go. John McClane's insertion into the action just
doesn't feel natural or really needed at all.
For the first 1/3 of the picture, it feels as if Bruce Willis is in a separate movie
trying to catch up with another movie.
Much of Willis's screentime in the opening reels consist of merely sitting and spurting out one
liners and really dumb dialogue to no one but himself. Willis just doesn't seem interested in this
movie and he feels shoehorned in. He seems acutely aware of this to boot. Willis and Jai Courtney also have zero
chemistry. To say that they don't have the chemistry of Willis and Samuel L Jackson is one thing, but they will make you long for the comparatively rich relationship that Willis share with Justin Long in Live Free or Die Hard. There’s far too much forced scripted emotion
involved in their relationship but none of it is fun and non of it works. Part of that might have to do with a poor
performance by Courtney. This is my
first run in with him, but he seems destined to team up with Sam Worthington in
a buddy cop film. It pains me to know
that Aaron Paul from TVs Breaking Bad
also auditioned for this role and would have been a PERFECT fit for Willis. He is of course a much better actor.
The direction of this film is just off-the-charts bad. In a Jason Bourne rip off nightmare, these
action scenes are insanely over-edited and hard to decipher. The entire film is
incredibly claustrophobic and doesn't try to give any time or care to anything other than the action sequences. I want to see
Russia. But they have managed to make every place visited in the film
lifeless, dull and just there when we should be basking in the idea of Die Hard in a foreign land. The
opening of the film devotes far too much time to one of the worst automobile
chases I've ever seen. The chase has no
sense geography, is completely implausible, and is (worst of all) incredibly
boring. There a lot of guns firing and
things crashing in this movie, but its all aimless, generic and dull. The word of the day is "uninspired".
I like the premise of this movie, doing the ‘Point A to
Point B in X Amount of Time’ plot.
That’s cool. This script just
needed like five more drafts and a real director in order to even make it
serviceable. And how about that R
rating? Aside from some swearing this
thing is incredibly PG-13. I’m wondering
if they didn't go back and ADR a bunch of “Fuck”s in to hope to get that
R. The PG-13 violence, gore and
intensity was MILES…and here I say it again MILES better in Live Free Or Die Hard than in this R-rated sequel. This movie is short, but if anything,
this movie’s plot and characters could have benefited from being longer (I want
to shoot myself from saying “make this longer”). The director doesn't want focus on dialogue,
plot and character. He just wants to get
to more of his shittily done action sequences.
There are some big moments in the end, but due to this director’s
inability to shoot anything good, at best I can say “things go boom”.
If you’re wanting to see a fresh Die Hard movie this weekend with an aged John McLane, don’t see this. I highly recommend you rent/buy/Netflix
Richard Donner’s last film 16 Blocks. Pretend the Bruce Willis character is John
McClane and run with it. Before Live Free Or Die Hard I kinda
unofficially looked at it as a final Die
Hard film. See that one this weekend
(or something else in the theater. Scott
says Beautiful Creatures is good, so
check that one out). If you MUST see
this one, don’t be in any hurry. A Good Day to Die Hard is dull, generic
and a complete disappointment as an addition to Die Hard series. Maybe folks
will finally lighten up about the fourth film now. If there is a sixth and final Die Hard (like Willis wants), would it
be possible for Jan de Bont to shoot the film, while John McTiernan directs via
satellite from prison like Spielberg did (not from prison mind you) for The Lost World: Jurassic Park? This series needs that magic one last time.
Grade: D
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3 comments:
And now a sense of dread enters me in anticipation 0f my decision on whether to see or not see tis film. It's a Taken 2 situation and I don't like it one bit!
Clearly it's 7am my time and I am a bit groggy! What I meant to say is: "NOW a deep sense of foreboding enters me in anticipation of my decision to see or to not see this film. It's a Taken 2 situation and I don't like it one bit." I'm awake now!
Very nice blog you havve here
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