A Good Day to Die Hard - (February 14, 2013): R
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Opening Weekend Box Office: #1 with $24,825,000
Domestic Box Office Gross to-date: $37,539,000
Gross Revenue: $117,139,000
Production Budget: $92 million
Director: John
Moore
Singlehandedly redefining the action genre in 1988,
few films hold as revered a spot in my cinematic library as the original Die Hard (for the love of God, it even
has Notre Dame references), and since my initial exposure to John McClane, I
have loved every chapter of the hero’s story (95’s With a Vengeance being my personal favorite). I was a little pissed when Live Free or Die Hard earned a PG-13
rating and muffled the infamous profanity-laden catchphrase, but if anything,
that choice made me all the more excited when it was announced that A Good Day to Die Hard would be
returning to the franchise’s default classification of “17 and over unless
accompanied by an adult.” With its
inherent legacy and the massive established fan base, 20th Century
Fox certainly didn’t have to worry about drawing a respectable crowd over the
extended President’s Day holiday, but that didn’t mean that it was okay to
bastardize one of the greatest movie quotes of all time with a tagline like “Yippie
Ki-Yay, Mother Russia”…yuck. Now, where
I was pretty pleased with the addition of Spartacus:
Blood and Sand star Jai Courtney as McClane’s son, I was perplexed at the
lack of information regarding the upcoming villain; I mean c’mon, who was going
to follow in the footsteps of Alan Rickman, Jeremy Irons, and Timothy Olyphant? And let’s not forget that the track record of
aged action heroes trying to revive careers has been spotty lately (just ask Schwarzenegger
and Stallone), but in revisiting a character that audiences recognize and
adore, everyone had high hopes for this fifth installment.
Pitting John McClane (Bruce Willis) against odds
that he has never faced, A Good Day to
Die Hard opens with the Moscow pre-trial of political prisoner and
whistleblower, Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch), who allegedly also possesses
incriminating evidence against a high-ranking and corrupt government official,
Viktor Chagrin (Sergei Kolesnikov).
Across town in a separate incident, Jack McClane (Jai Courtney) is arrested
after a club shooting and agrees to provide evidence against Komarov in return
for a shorter sentence; hearing of his son’s predicament, John McClane decides
to travel to Russia in order to provide some support, earning some last minute advice
from his daughter, Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). While John approaches the courthouse that
holds both his son and Komarov, a series of explosions orchestrated by Chagrin
and his main enforcer, Alik (Radivoje Bukvić), detonate and free the prisoners;
but before Jack and Komarov can be recaptured by the mercenaries, John
confronts the duo and together, all three escape the brazen assault. It is revealed that Jack is in fact a CIA
operative tasked with extracting Komarov and recovering the evidence against
Chagrin, but thanks to the brutal assassins on their tail, the aged McClane and
his son are shockingly outmatched with little backup. Uncovering a massive conspiracy that involves
everything from Chernobyl to Komarov’s daughter, Irina (Yuliya Snigir), John
McClane realizes that he will have to use every tool at his disposal in order to
survive and save his family.
I am having trouble deciding where to start, because
really, there is an insane amount of things wrong with A Good Day to Die Hard, thereby creating a film that not only leaves
an indelible black mark on the franchise, but is also one that longtime fans
would be better off not acknowledging.
First off, John McClane has always been rough around the edges, but so
little of his charm and intelligence shows in this latest installment that it
is near-impossible to recognize our beloved hero; in actuality, it is more like
we are just watching Bruce Willis and he is in an exceptionally pissy mood,
ignoring common sense in order to throw out another mean-spirited observation. Then there is the shocking lack of competent
supporting characters; Die Hard
villains have always been a mix of threatening and fun, but the ill-defined
Russians our hero fights this time around are little more than forgettable and
stupid thugs who would get the hell beat out of them by the Gruber brothers. And where McClane has enjoyed allies just as
engaging as his adversaries, Jack is one of the most stoic and clichéd supporting
characters I have ever encountered; when we were introduced to Lucy in 2007,
she was a fun addition and a testament to her father’s personality, but it is
hard to get any kind of reading off of Jack because he reveals little more than
the fact that he hates his father (for no apparent reason…how original). Now, while this many missteps are undoubtedly
horrifying to longtime fans of Bruce Willis’ career-defining franchise, believe
it or not, I am only getting started with pointing out everything that sucks
about this fifth chapter.
One of the main reasons that John McClane has
resonated so strongly with audiences is that he provides a stark contrast to
macho super-humans like Stallone and Schwarzenegger; he is an ordinary man put
in an unfortunate situation, and though he gets the hell beat out of him, he
finds a way to save to the day. Between
its nonsensical script and over the top action sequences, the writers of A Good Day to Die Hard clearly forgot
that simple truth, and the end-result is thoroughly and laughably unbelievable. I may have been able to forgive the script’s
inexplicable favoring of a Jason Bourne, international political conspiracy
angle, that made very little sense and devolved into a Chernobyl cop-out, but I’m
calling foul on all the death-traps McClane walks out of without a
scratch. Don’t get me wrong, the past Die Hard movies have had some ridiculous
stunts, but McClane always got bloodied and bruised because of it and still
kept fighting; this time around, there is no way that I’m going to buy that he
was thrown from a crashing helicopter through reinforced glass at a high velocity,
only to pop-up and start laughing immediately, showing no signs of pain or
fatigue…what a load of crap. To put it
simply, A Good Day to Die Hard goes
out of its way to either pervert or ignore every aspect that made its
predecessors so successful, and because of that, longtime fans have to feel
betrayed and infuriated.
As the highest profile release of the Valentine’s/President’s
Day Holiday Weekend, A Good Day to Die
Hard was the easy favorite against competing entries from the romance genre
like Beautiful Creatures and Safe Haven…talk about a release schedule
causing strife between couples deciding what to see at the theater. Because of the reputation of the Die Hard movies, analysts projected a
debut in the ballpark of $40 million, and though the fifth chapter fell far
short of those expectations, domestic and international revenues have combined
for a considerable impact, none of which the film deserves. I can only hope that word of mouth and the
critical panning thus far received does its job and stops the momentum of this
sequel dead in the water, preventing the turn of a profit and any discussion of
releasing a sixth installment. As the
first film of the series to truly receive a negative reception, you would think
that both Bruce Willis and 20th Century Fox would be embarrassed,
because truthfully, they owe fans an apology for this project that should have
never been made. If you are a true fan
of Die Hard, stay the hell away from
the theater, pop-in the collector’s edition DVDs, and remember the better times
of John McClane, because this time around, all we are left with is an
unrecognizable shadow of former glory that is long gone.
Overall
Recommendation: Very Low
