“Yippee Ki-Yay Mother Russia.”
Bruce Willis returns as John McClane for the fifth installment of the Die Hard franchise in A Good Day to Die Hard. Here, he must travel to Moscow, Russia to assist his estranged son Jack (Jai Courtney), who has been arrested for attempted murder.
The movie begins promisingly enough. A high ranking government official attempts to strong-arm billionaire political prisoner Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch). Yuri has a file that this official wants, and of course, Yuri cannot be bought, and so on. McClane makes his way to Moscow, has a brief scene with a funny Russian cabbie, and hell breaks loose.
The official’s goon squad blows up the courthouse in search of Yuri, but Jack pulls Yuri out of the courthouse in an attempt to escape with him. For someone who was going to testify against Yuri, Jack seems awfully insistent on protecting him. It’s possible that Jack had planned to get caught.
He gets in a van with Yuri and starts to flee. However, John finds Jack, the goons get in their tank-like truck, and a chase ensues with Jack in the lead, followed by the goons, followed by John who insists as if Jack could hear him: “I’m not done talking with you yet!”
An astonishing number of cars are destroyed in the course of the chase as the movie quickly devolves into a standard action movie that just happens to feature John McClane.
To the movie’s credit, the first explosion (the courthouse) does not occur until about 15 minutes in, and the first rocket launcher blast doesn’t happen until about 10 minutes later, a blast which John deftly dodges with his pickup truck.
After the chase, the plot thickens at the safe house where John finds out that Jack is a CIA agent. From there the movie goes from action scene to action scene with meaningless dialogue in between.
The screenplay, written by Skip Woods of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The A-Team, tries to show depth intermittently, but the dialogue comes off as corny and unoriginal.
For example, John and Yuri have a heart to heart talk about children and work. John is sincere, but this is not the first time a father has felt bad for spending too much time working and missing out on the lives of his kids. Consequently, instead of enriching the characters, this dialogue has the opposite effect by stereotyping them.
The funny moments often fall flat.
In one scene, one of the goons explains why he hates Americans: “You know what I hate about Americans? Everything, especially cowboys.” Of course, the audience is supposed to laugh here because John McClane with his Roy Rogers catch phrase “Yippee Ki-Yay” is like a cowboy. This line exists for no reason other than to pander to those that have seen the other installments. If you have not seen the other movies, this joke is nonsensical; it cannot stand on its own. John smiles to himself, but it is still not funny.
A Good Day to Die Hard is Rocky V all over again. The premise has been stretched too thin and now the movie is, in many ways, a parody of itself. A Good Day to Die Hard lacks everything that made the original Die Hard so good: a compelling villain, meaningful dialogue and reasons to care.In the film’s defense, it’s about ninty minutes long, which is refreshing given that so many movies with big budgets tend to run far too long. Bruce Willis is the film’s highlight. John McClane is witty and curse-happy as usual, and all of the best dialogue goes to him.
However his wittiness cannot overcome the clichéd script. John McClane deserves a better final film than this. Rocky Balboa turned out well, so maybe Die Hard 6 can too.
As for this installation, most people can skip it. It’s for diehard McClane fans only.
