Stars Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Yuliya Snigir, Sergei Kolesnikov with Cole Hauser and Mary Elizabeth Winstead Directed by John Moore Released in 1988, Die Hard became a seminal movie. It was a touchstone concept that became a genre unto itself influencing a whole load of films that followed(Die Hard on a boat or a bus or a hockey rink or train, and so on) - some good, most not. None that followed actually managed to capture the magic of the original where Bruce Willis' cop, John McClane, finds himself in a situation that is beyond his grasp. Due to circumstance of the situation, he finds himself on his own with no shirt, no shoes and only his gun. One man, stripped to the bare essentials, improvising and making things up as he goes along trying to survive and save his wife from the bad guys. Add to that the confluence of the simplistic plot, outstanding script with numerous red herrings, witty dialogue, beautiful cinematography, stirring music, tight direction and a star-making turn from Willis (and Alan Rickman as the villain), Die Hard is rightfully a classic action movie. Twenty five years later and following three sequels that barely fudged with the formula, but simply raised the stakes and riding on the pure charm of its star, A Good Day to Die Hard is the least 'Die Hard' movie of the lot. Sure, it has Willis as McClane, who still finds himself caught up in some crazy situation, but it seems to be more by choice than by accident. It's not quite the 'wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time' as it used to be. Also, as the series has progressed, McClane has seemed to have grown a little more invincible and less the everyman he started out as. (And Willis seems have kept in damn good shape.) Finding that his son, Jack (Jai Courtney), may be in trouble, McClane travels to Moscow (for a guy who didn't like to fly, he was very comfortable in the plane) and then gets caught up with his son's business. He then decides to hang around and help out Jack. That's pretty much it. There are four major action set-pieces that are just piled up one upon the other. All done with some slick workmanship that there barely feels like there's any variation or any real stakes. (Oh, look, there's a beefy tough guy working for the baddies, surely there's going to be some fist fight with that guy… but no.) Even when the expected twist comes, it doesn't surprise as it used to (and McClane himself isn't as surprised anymore). In all, it feels very much like this is a direct-to-video version of what someone else thinks is a Die Hard film, only because it involves McClane. This is no more than any other action film you might find on cable these days (the image ratio is even formatted to the 16x9 format), albeit with far bigger explosions. The far too slim plot barely carries the movie to 100 minutes (more than half is just the action alone), and McClane is no longer the 'fly in the ointment' for the bad guys. There's no scale, no real threat, no sense of danger and very uncharismatic villains who barely register. If anything, this feels like it's simply passing the torch, or setting up the next one (and it would feel like there would be just one more to bring back the remaining family member and properly raise the stakes again). Take it as some action film that just happens to have a familiar character - ignore the Die Hard connection - and you might just have a decent action film that's held by some silly plot. As a Die Hard film (the first to not be based on some pre-existing material), it just fails.
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