By Jeremy Hannaford (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: February 20, 2013
Action films have always pushed the boundaries of disbelief. Lots of times, they take it too far but there are certain films that play it just right. Die Hard wasn’t just an action movie; it was a pinnacle of the everyday hero. Everything that the 1988 classic did has been reused and copied hundreds of times over but never to the same effect. Now we have been given A Good Day to Die Hard which completely breaks the boundaries and tarnishes the last bit of credibility the Die Hard franchise had left.
A Good Day to Die Hard starts out as well as one would expect. While the story isn’t inventive, we are thoroughly entertained once the action starts. But any time the film tries to be more than meaningless violence; the cracks really start to show. McClane goes to Russia to find his son, who is all too willing to repeat how much he doesn’t like his father. His repetition is nauseating and really doesn’t further establish his character. He turns out to be a CIA agent on a mission and together, they fight bad guys and toss each other wise cracks despite the bad chemistry.
The essence of the film was to try and establish this damaged relationship between McClane and his estranged son. But there is no depth here beyond what is stated. The conflict between the two is stale and empty and is completely forgettable.
Then there is a moment where you can tell screenwriter Skip Woods wrote himself into a corner. He has nowhere left to lead the characters and stay in the realm of believability. So instead, he puts McClane and son on the most ridiculous path ever conceived and proceeds to decimate the film in the final 30 minutes. The original Die Hard kept itself in the realms of reality and encapsulated many action movie moments that by now have become every day clichés – clichés that are ripped off in this sequel. These moments are so blatant and unoriginal that it feels like Woods put them in there just for namesake. He does nothing to mold them into something unique or at the very least original.
The only truly decent thing in this movie is Bruce Willis, but not in the sense of being classic John McClane. Bruce is older now and he tries to reflect that in the character. We get a more run-down version of McClane, who is still full of witty banter and wise cracks but has no real emotional factors left. One could think that having been thrown into so many horrible situations before, McClane would be as used to fighting bad guys as we would be waking up in the morning. But later on it just feels like he’s doing it because he needs to push the movie along. The film rolls like a conveyor belt rather than an actual engaging story and no amount of awesome that Willis emits can change that.
In Die Hard there was a scene where the villain played by Alan Rickman pretended to be an American to disguise himself from hero McClane only to trick him later on. They wrote the scene into the script because they discovered Rickman’s talent for mimicking American accents. There is nothing even close to being that creative or original in the new film. It doesn’t even have a proper villain. So with no true adversary for McClane to fight, he just shoots whatever gets in his way. Some would say that the director of this film is the villain. Many fans were upset when they saw that John Moore, the man who directed Max Payne, was directing this film. It certainly didn’t help when Skip Wood’s recent films were X Men: Origins – Wolverine and Hitman. We aren’t given a Die Hard movie, we’re given an extremely dumbed down action flick that leaves you with nothing but disappointment.
