Film Review: A Good Day to Die Hard

A Good Day to Die Hard. Rated M (action violence and coarse language). 98 minutes. Directed by John Moore. Screenplay by Skip Woods.

Verdict: A pensioned-off John McClane does not a great Die Hard film make.

We first met Bruce Willis’s charming and ever-resourceful New York City cop John McClane in Die Hard (1988). It was Christmas Eve, and as a fearless band of German terrorists took the occupants of the Nakatomi Plaza (including McClane’s wife Holly) hostage, our reluctant hero matched wits (and improvised explosive devices) with the Germans and went on to win the day. Billions of box office dollars later, the fifth film in the series explodes onto the big screen – and while it is far from perfect, it is a virtuoso display of big action set pieces that will shake you to your core.

When John McClane (Willis) learns that his son Jack (Jai Courtney) has been arrested in Moscow, John decides to travel to the Russian capital to find out why Jack is in so much trouble. When he discovers that Jack is a CIA agent on a covert operation to secure the contents of a file loaded with evidence against a corrupt Russian official, father and son join forces to prevent the passage of weapons-grade uranium into the hands of US-hating extremists.

What made Willis’s John McClane so popular in the first Die Hard film was his affable, everyman persona. Just when all the odds were seriously stacked against him, his perseverance, agility and creativity came through to win the day – while also ensuring his ‘Yippee ki-yay’ catchcry became one of the most instantly recognisable lines of dialogue in recent memory.

This time around, John is introduced as a weary shadow of his former self, and it’s a miscalculation that is at odds with everything that follows in Woods’ (The A-Team, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Swordfish) humourless, spark-free, but action-packed screenplay. While McClane as the doting father who wants to bond with his recalcitrant son brings the film a certain quaintness and all-too-fleeting moments of welcome brevity, it also serves to pension him off, which is not the way to ensure a Die Hard film works as well as it might.

Australian-born Courtney (Jack Reacher, Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Packed to the Rafters) bears a disarming resemblance to compatriot (and fellow action movie hero) Sam Worthington, but once you’ve stopped having that conversation with yourself, there’s a good deal to enjoy about his charismatic performance in which he more than matches it with the expert Willis.

Ultimately though, all that appears to matter here is Moore (Flight of the Phoenix) making his mark as a director of action movies, which he does with unbelievable excess. The breath-draining opening car chase sequence, in which John tries to catch up with his son through the streets of Moscow, is so ridiculously over-the-top, that by the time the film eventually collapses under the weight of its aggressive and destructive tendencies, it ends up being pretty much all you can remember. And that is probably just as well.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.