Review: A Good Day to Die Hard (2013) dies badly.

A Good Day to Die Hard

2013
97 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson 

For a retrospective of the entire series, go HERE.

As my father likes to say, if you don't quit while you're ahead, you'll never be ahead.  By all rights, Live Free or Die Hard (trailer 01) should have been terrible.  It came twelve years after the previous installment, was helmed by the likes of Len Wiseman (a man who managed to make a movie about vampires fighting werewolves boring), ended up with a PG-13, and held back from the press for as long as humanly possible.  Yet, thanks to strong action sequences and a story very much concerned with John McClane coming to terms with his metaphorical death (IE - irrelevance), the fourth entry was just good enough to justify its existence.  But the McClane luck has officially run out.  A Good Day to Die Hard is a terrible film, one of the very worst theatrical movies I have ever seen.  It's willfully stupid, lacking in basic character chemistry and narrative discipline, officially turning John McClane into a borderline insane anti-social lunatic.  It has nothing worth recommending.  A Good Day to Die Hard is basically the movie we all thought we were getting six years ago.

Brandon Peters retrospective reviews: Die Hard 5 (2013)

I was supposed to attend Tuesday's A Good Day to Die Hard screening, with the intent of having a review up Wednesday afternoon.  Alas, my wife got sick (nothing uber-serious), so I still haven't seen the film.  But thankfully Brandon Peters was kind enough to whip up a review in my absence.  I'm intending on seeing the film this weekend and will try to have a review of sorts up then, but in the meantime, let's let Brandon Peters give us his thoughts on the fifth and (for now) final Die Hard adventure...

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 director of Max Payne, The Flight of the Phoenix remake and The Omen remake.

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 Good Day to Die Hard gets a generic but amusing teaser.

As expected, Fox is indeed attaching the first teaser for Die Hard 5 to prints of Taken 2, which opens tonight at 10pm (I may or may not attend).  There's nothing wrong with this teaser and its use of "Ode to Joy" serves to remind us that it is ineed a Die Hard movie and not just a generic action picture where Bruce Willis kills people.  There is no real hint of plot and only a token acknowledgment that the story takes place in Russia.  Other than John McClane's son (Jai Courtney) the only prominent new character is the Russian bombshell Julia Snigir.  I'll forgive the drooling on display as the last two Die Hard films had pretty bad-ass female villains, so one hopes Snigir is an antagonist and not a love interest for John McClane Jr.  Truth be told this does look pretty fun and of a certain scale, even if John Moore has yet to make a good movie.  Anyway, A Good Day to Die Hard debuts on Valentines Day weekend, 2013, which is where Fox had good luck ten years ago (!) with Daredevil.  As always, we'll see...  Feel free to share your thoughts below.

Scott Mendelson