Brian’s Review – A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

A Good Day to Die Hard

Directed by John Moore

2 out of 10

John McClane travels to Russia to help out his seemingly wayward son, Jack, only to discover that Jack is a CIA operative working to prevent a nuclear-weapons heist, causing the father and son to team up against underworld forces.

Bruce Willis ought to be ashamed of himself for having the audacity of inflicting this piece of shit on the public and then having the nerve to call it a Die Hard film. This is as bad a cash grab I’ve seen from an actor in recent memory. All of the charm and fun from the earlier entries in the series feesl like a distant memory and they’re replaced with an experience here that feels cold, boring, distant, incomprehensible, and ugly. Why in the hell did Bruce Willis make this? He’s certainly not hard up for cash after being one of the top paid actors for the last quarter century.

So, why do a sequel to a beloved series that isn’t of very high quality? I’m not here to try to convince anyone that Die Hard is high art or anything but they were slam band action films that were fun and contained a realistic hero in unrealistic situations. The John McClane character is among the most loved off all time in the action genre and easily Bruce Willis’s most iconic screen role. This film shows a complete disrespect for the earlier work and Willis himself is largely to blame. My criticism are as follows:

1. There’s no discernable story here. If there’s no story then the audience has zero reason to care.
2. As with #1, there’s no characters that are remotely interesting…including John McClane!!! If you don’t care about the characters, you don’t care when they’re in danger and therefore there’s no suspense.
3. This film is photographed horribly. The entire thing is way too dark and smothered in dark blues and smeary reds. It creates problems as a viewer because when you mix that with the shaky cam effect, it makes an already impossible film to follow even murkier.
4. Bruce Willis acts old and tired. He puts no effort in to create any dramatic weight and looks utterly bored.
5. John Moore is a schlock director. Did anyone see Max Payne? I rest my case.
6. You won’t have any clue what’s going on from one scene to the next. There’s no flow. I was confused and yet too bored to put in any effort to figure it out.
7. The villian sucks. He has no backstory and very few lines.
8. There’s double crosses by characters who have almost no screen time. If I don’t even know who these people are, why would I care if someone betrayed someone else?

I could go on and on but I’ll end with this. This isn’t just the worst Die Hard film but my pick as the worst film so far of 2013.