'Die Hard' died hard

Did we really need another “Die Hard”?

“A Good Day to Die Hard,” the fifth film in the franchise, offers approximately two hours of solid bullet spray and bad one-liners, yet never really addresses this problem: if it weren’t for the opening credits, anyone could be mistaken for thinking the movie was just another expensive action flick with the ubiquitous gunslinger, Bruce Willis, taking the lead.

After an extended prologue involving some rival Russian politicians and an assassination, New York City detective John McClane decides to investigate the situation in Moscow. Turns out, the assassin was his estranged son Jack (Jai Courtney), whose pinched face and toned muscles really do resemble those of big daddy McClane. Jack, along with the politician Yuri (Sebastian Koch), is about to testify in court against the corrupt politician Chagrin when the courtroom explodes. The two make a getaway in an overly long and confusing car chase, meet McClane, who has been dog-tailing, and find their way to a safe house. Five minutes later, the cover is blown and Yuri is captured.

This is more or less where the plot ends. With the excuse of getting to Yuri and a mysterious file, whose contents contain evidence of Chagrin’s illicit nuclear affairs, Jack and John work hard the next hour to stack up as many bodies as possible.
 
Director John Moore might once have had ambition for the film, but he certainly doesn’t show it. There’s a hint at a relationship between Jack and John, expressed mainly through lousy sentiment and frequent “atta boy’s,” but nothing brings the two together quite like carnage.

This is fortunate, because there’s a multitude of villains that need killing. Among these is Alik, a dancing henchman who hates Americans and tries too hard to fit the archetype of the eccentric bad guy. Those Russians just don’t ever change.

This is, coincidentally, much of the film’s problem. There’s no sense of character or ambiguity outside the most rigid of old prejudices. The bad guys are the ones with the accents, who still call each other “tovarisch” and want to destroy the world because they’d make a good profit. The good guys are the ones with the guns — the ones who can rip through baddies and still score hoots from the audience by virtue of the fact that they’re protecting Uncle Sam.

McClane is more Rambo than Bond, and this isn’t a bad thing. He doesn’t think so much as reload and smirk. But what ultimately kills the film is the fact that there’s no variation on this theme, because everything exists to be destroyed, and bad guys exist to get shot. It doesn’t matter so much what they’re after so long as they have a cool death.

If gunplay is what you’re looking for, then “A Good Day to Die Hard” won’t disappoint. The film can’t be faulted for delivering what it promises, which is a multitude of explosions and thousands of empty cartridges. Even if it’s all pretty much meaningless, at the very least it still looks and sounds cool. Yippee Ki-yay.