Hello guys and welcome my review of the final installment of the Die Hard series at last! It has taken a while to get here, but I’m glad to finally be wrapping up this series of reviews (in a happy way) as it has been a lot of fun looking back on these movies. So after Live Free or Die Hard came out and became a solid hit at the box office it took a surprisingly good while for a follow up to emerge, though Bruce Willis did tease that 4 would not be the last in the series so it was only a matter of time before it would get released. And so it did in February of 2013 where it did reasonably well at the global box office (over $300 million on a $92 million budget) even though there was a notable drop domestically between the fourth and this one. However reviews were not kind at all to it as it was by far the worst received of all the Die Hard movies and has gone on to have a pretty infamous reputation as one of the most reviled action movies in recent memory. Unfortunately this is a sentiment I agree with. As a massive fan of the Die Hard series, it pains me to say that I really do not like this movie at all and it is a steep dive in quality. Without further ado let’s dive into this trainwreck and see why it frustrates me so much.
After the opening scene that shows John’s scene, Jack, getting arrested in Moscow, Russia, we cut to John McClane still working as a detective for the NYPD finding out about his son (whom he hasn’t contacted in a very long time) and deciding to go to Moscow to straighten things out. However as John arrives at the courthouse where Jack is set to testify against government whistleblower, Yuri Komarov, a bomb explosion occurs and Jack is able to escape but not before confronting his own father. John now learns that Jack is a CIA agent that has been undercover for the past three years trying to take down the man responsible for the bombing, Viktor Chagarin, with the help of a drive Yuri has that contains incriminating evidence. Yuri agrees to help them out in exchange for safe passage out of Russia for him and his daughter, but things take a wrong turn once Chagarin’s men find them and now Jack has no choice but to bring his dad along in order to complete the mission, but not without a lot of obstacles in the way.
If I can say something positive about this movie it is that I don’t think the basic idea for the plot is a bad one. While we got to see the relationship between John and his daughter, Lucy, in Live Free or Die Hard, we never saw him have any sort of interactions with his son. In a sense this could have been an opportunity to explore that relationship especially given what the family has been through with John and Hollie constantly getting back together and divorcing time and again and the toll that had on the family. Also having the series go international could be fun as we get to see John out of his element trying to navigate a new environment, similar to how he went up against cyberterrorists in 4. All that COULD be nice if done well… it’s just that the execution is severely lacking. The Moscow setting is essentially just there for window dressing and the story plays out as just a super generic “take the asset from one location to the next” action thriller with little in the way of emotional investment or intrigue at play. It just felt like it moved from scene to scene as the writers felt more concerned with getting to the next point in the story without actually developing anything to the point when the action does come (more on that in a bit) I just didn’t find myself all that invested in it as it just felt like a bunch of noise more than anything else. On a similar note, the film barely attempts to look into the relationship between John and Jack never registers and as we only get scenes of them arguing and then hastily working things out by the end… great storyline right? Even some of the attempts at humor don’t really work and there is more of a tonal whiplash as it tries to be a fairly serious thriller but also a ridiculous action comedy with neither working and it lacks that seamless blend of both excitement and comedy that the other films in the franchise delivered in spades.
Even if I wasn’t invested at all in the story, the least this movie could do is deliver some solid action sequences. Unfortunately those are also lacking as well. Like I said before there is very little to latch onto in these sequences as they just feel there for the sake of having action and they are mostly just comprised of standard shoot outs, car chases and scenes of hand to hand combat that don’t really impress that much on a conceptual level. Not helping matters is that this is one of those action movies that HEAVILY uses shaky cam and quick cut editing to try and make what we are looking at more exciting and while it can be used to good effect sometimes this is not one of them. A lot of the action just looked incomprehensible with the worst offender being a truck chase on a free way that felt like a monkey was given the camera to just jump around and zoom in and out a lot and the climax at Chernobyl which was almost hard to see due to how dark it was. Even much of the VFX looks shoddy at times (you’d think the artist would have been given more time on a big project like this) and while there are a couple of cool looking explosions and stunts that isn’t enough to make what’s happening onscreen seem worthwhile. Also for a movie with this budget it looks oddly cheap as it feels small and scale as we are mostly confined to single room locations for much of the runtime and it just doesn’t look all that appealing with this ugly color scheme where it doesn’t look like much thought was put into making things look cinematic. Instead it looks direct to DVD which is shocking considering we’re talking about such a big franchise installment like this.
As I’ve mentioned in every single one of these Die Hard reviews John McClane is one of my favorite characters in any form of media and Bruce Willis brings so much to the role that it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing this person. So it breaks my heart to see him characterized the way he is in this movie! What I love about him is that he is just this every man who always tries to do the right thing no matter what the risks are because he knows not everyone can. Here he seems to have become a superhero as he comes out of every fight unscathed, wanting to join the danger and always making a ton of quips and he also has a strange disregard for human life judging by all the cars he ran over in that truck chase and it all just goes against what this character stood for in the first place. Plus Bruce Willis doesn’t have that same charisma he once he had here and just phones it in which is frankly disappointing. Not helping is that he and Jai Courtney (who seems to be better at playing villains than heroes) have very little chemistry as a father and son duo as they just shout generic barbs at each other and Jack is nothing but a stern CIA agent who is focused on the mission (though one can understand his frustration at his father joining along unceremoniously). Meanwhile Mary Elizabeth Winstead is little more than a cameo as Lucy McClane even though she is one of the only reminders that that this is a Die Hard sequel and not just some straight to VOD action movie with the Die Hard name slapped onto it. Another frustrating aspect are the villains (spoilers from here on regarding the twist). In the past I’ve liked to love most of the other Die Hard villains with only Die Harder’s Col. Stuart being the weakest. Boy do I owe him an apology as at least William Sadler did what he could with that role. Here we are led to believe that Sergei Kolesnikov’s tap dancing, carrot munching, Chagarin is the main threat, but it is revealed that Yuri (Sebastian Koch) and his daughter, Irina (Yulia Snigir), all along who just wanted to get uranium from a vault in Chernobyl. Not only does the twist not register at all given how little investment I had in the movie, but these two were such boring villains who had little personality that the reveal left such little impact. Once again a far cry from what we got in the previous movies.
Sadly, I really did not like A Good Day to Die Hard at all as it serves as huge low point for the franchise. There are elements that had potential but all of it is squandered by an uninvolving story, weak humor, generic and incoherent action, weak villains, wooden performances, and a complete lack of understanding of what makes John McClane such a great character. Not much else to say except that this film just frustrated me so much and I’d name it as one of my least favorite big blockbuster type movies as it failed to entertain and provide what I love about Die Hard as a series. But enough of that as despite my thoughts on it, I still have a great fondness for the other films in this series and it was such a treat getting to review all of them. If your curious my ranking would be 1>3>4>2>>>>5 (not surprising if you read all the reviews). So now that I’ve wrapped this series of reviews up, feel free to let me know down below in the comments what your thoughts are on the Die Hard series are and what agreed or disagreed with me on. Also feel free to let me know any other movies series you would like me to cover as there are a lot I’d be eager to re visit and review!
Rating: D
Please leave your thoughts down below in the comments and see you guys later!
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