Film Review: John Moore's A Good Day to Die Hard

Perhaps director John Moore and screenwriter Skip Woods should have been made to sit down and watch the original Die Hard before making this, the fifth installment in the franchise.   One would assume that if they did not already make such a decision on their own, they would have invariably been told to do such a thing, but judging from the outcome of A Good Day to Die Hard, this must not have been the case.  Surely, if they had done this, they would have seen how to write and direct a damn good action flick, and would have come up with something a whole hell of a lot better than what I unfortunately had to be witness to up on that big screen the other day.  And, while we are at it, perhaps we should also sit Bruce Willis down and remind him of the inherent fun that is Die Hard - because I think he may have forgotten lo these past two decades plus.

Sure, A Good Day to Die Hard (great title though) isn't Steven Seagal bad.  It isn't Van Damme bad.  It certainly isn't Sylvester Stallone in Cobra bad.  This movie isn't exactly bad per se, just godawfully mediocre - which may be an even worse crime.  The first Die Hard, made back in 1988, and starring a wisecracking TV star with a receding hairline and really no movie experience under his belt, was a surprise hit - and one of my all-time favourite action movies.  Quick-witted and very funny, Willis changed the face of the action star.  No longer did he need to be a muscleheaded barbarian or a monosyllabic goon.  Now he could be cocky and snarky.  Now he could be the underdog that makes good by intelligence, and perhaps a lot of sheer luck.  Now he could be Bruce Willis as John McClain in Die Hard.   Since then, there has been a slew of cheap knock-offs, including the sequels themselves - none of which has ever been able to match wits with the original thing.  And also since then, Willis has become a superstar and has appeared in numerous good films, with numerous good performances.  Just this past year, Willis was just fine in Looper.  But here and now?  Um...

As I said, it's not like Willis can't make a bad picture a little better by his mere presence alone.  The second, third and even fourth Die Hard films are proof of that.  Red, a mediocre film indeed, is more proof of that, but then he had a lot of help with that one.  Here though, it doesn't even look like the actor is trying.  Is he phoning it in for a paycheck?  Perhaps.  Granted, he gets no real help here.  He doesn't have the magic of a villain like Hans Gruber, played with a melancholy maniacal glee by Alan Rickman in the first Die Hard, nor does he have the likes of a Malkovich or a Mirren to help him make a bad film better, as he did in Red.  Nope, it's basically just Bruce Willis, alone in the wilderness out there, surrounded by no one capable of helping make this bad movie any better.  My advice?  Skip this film altogether and go home and watch the original Die Hard on your TV.  Everything will surely be better.  Couldn't get much worse.