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This year two movies are released about a guy trying to take back the White House from terrorists. Both movies seem to be made out of the classic Die Hard mold, a mold the actual franchise has been stepping away from more and more with each installment. Instead of going back to its roots, the fifth movie upped the ante once more and has John McClane end up in Moscow and even Chernobyl together with his son who turns out to be working deep undercover for the CIA.
Other than the name John McClane and one Yippee Ki-Yay this movie feels more like a generic Bruce Willis action movie than an installment in a classic franchise which once was a solid trilogy before it became a good quadrilogy and now is an OK pentalogy.
The original movie had one guy be at the wrong time at the wrong place, a guy who was flawed and ran around bare foot. He was an average man, trying to repair his marriage but who ended up killing a dozen terrorists. He was the answer to all those 80s movies about unstoppable one man armies like Stallone and Schwarzenegger portrayed in a lot of movies. It’s funny that when movies like The last Stand feature guys like Schwarzenegger now playing more your average man, Bruce Willis’ John McClane has become the exact opposite of what he once was: a one man army capable of taking out dozens of Russian commando’s without blinking. In the first three movies he was a hesitant guy, who did what he had to do to save his loved ones, but one who wasn’t used to jumping off buildings and whose feet were cut open by glass. In this movie he jumps through glass and out off buildings without breaking a sweat, he drives a car out of a helicopter without blinking. He even isn’t saving a loved one no more. This is a man who’s not familiar with being afraid of dying, and who is helped by his estranged son (Jai Courtney) who also possesses super fighting powers.
If I was to describe this movie in one sentence it would be: shit blowing up really good. This movie jumps from one scene to another all filled with action. Only the first 15 minutes or so are used to build up something reminiscent of a plot, after that it’s a lot of chase scenes, fire fights, bickering between father and son McClane and things going boom.
The only thing it lifts from the original movie was the twist, well since a twist also occurred in part 2 and 3 (Sorry, but I can’t remember a lot of details about the 4th movie) it can hardly be called a twist. There are multiple here, but they’re the same kind of twists of the second and third movie combined.
A Good Die To Die Hard is a decent generic action movie that has some great action scenes but never gives the audience something to laugh about, and that is something I think this movie should have done. It’s a fifth movie about a New York cop constantly running into terrorist plots, how could they treat it so seriously?
The finale takes places in and around Chernobyl, but it’s mostly set at night so they don’t make any good use of the original creepy atmosphere that place has from itself. We only see a glimpse of the abandoned bumper carts and that’s it. It could have just as well been any other factory or plant.
The only really good thing about this movie is that it’s R-rated so this time no gunshot muffling John McClane favorite catch-phrase.
