A Good Day To Die Hard (2013)  

Review: written Sep 2013

A Goodbye to Die Hard

John McClane is back. Well, actually, a 2 dimensional version of him is, somehow devoid of any of those appealing characteristics of humanity and "guy-next-door-ness". This time, we are led to believe he has a son we have not yet heard about, whom he travels to Moscow to find and restore the family connection he lost some time ago. His son has taken a career path that astonishingly his pop was unaware of, and McClane Senior and McClane Junior soon bond through killing umpteen anonymous bad guys, plus causing untold injuries and deaths in the populace around them.

To be fair, there are some breathtaking scenes in the car chase through Moscow, with an incredible amount of mayhem, smashing cars and explosions.. which is, let's be truthful, part of why we watch a movie with `Die Hard' in the title. It's exciting, even though the camera tends to shake around so much you often have just a sense that something exciting is happening, while not being fully aware of what it actually is. But the buzz isn't sustainable, and as the impressive stuntwork gives way to cgi McClanes flying through the air in the latter half of the movie, our brains are simply unable to hold that disbelief in suspension any more and the movie becomes at best a partial snoozefest. The latter half of the movie suffers also from the absence of Moscow, which turns out to be quite an inspired choice for a movie like this, which gets replaced with somewhere suitably abandoned and lacking in energy (no pun intended, in case you know the story already). This might have held together if there was a suitably charismatic villain.. but there isn't one. The US taking sides with one half of a Moscow oligarch feud seems both unlikely and distasteful, and neither of them seem at all.. well, interesting. Oh and did I forget to mention Jai Courtney plays McClane's son? Mmmhh - probably because my brain is already forgetting about it. Not so much because of the performance, just that the script never really lets him come into his own.

Maybe I am being a bit harsh.. after all, this is quite a routine and acceptable action flick. But the thing is, I loved Die Hard. I maybe wasn't quite sure why at the time, but unfortunately I have movies such as this to clarify it for me. Die Hard allowed our action heroes to be more human and vulnerable while still delivering thrills and action. The action was precise and thrilling not because it was unbelievable, but because we were amazed to find it happening to this guy we accepted as belonging in the real world. With this movie, we are firmly back into the 80's territory we were rescued from in the first place, of supermen we can't believe in, and abundant action that loses its thrill pretty quickly.

How sad.