Private Hudson
Posts: 1718
Joined: 30/9/2005
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I love Die Hard and actually I have loved every one of the previous 4 movies, even though that bit in Die Hard 4.0 when he takes on a fighter was pushing the OTT boundary for me. Sadly in this movie that boundary has well and truly been jumped over. The movie is simply preposterous. Okay so the original film was called 'Die Hard' but in this case they take it to extremes. Just how many falls through glass/concrete/any material known to man can one man take without a broken bone or limb? Also there was no ingenious set-up that the other 4 movies had. In Die Hard we had the then new thrill of terrorists hijacking an enclosed space (since done to death with Die Hard on a.... fill in the blanks). Die Harder had the danger of Holly being aboard one of the doomed airliners. With a Vengeance had the excellent gimmick of 'Simon Says' and a decent side kick in Zeus. 4.0 had a great start with the bad guys taking over transport and communications across the US, and had a techno theme. Sadly for A Good Day to Die Hard there is no uniqueness to it. We've seen all this before. Bad Russians and even badder Russians. Double crossed Russians. Die Hards were successful due to having a witty and clever plot along with some kind of USP/gimmick which I have outlined above. That's what set them above many of contemporary action films. Plus they had a style to them as well. This plot seems a bit like every Z-grade action movie on Movies4Men starring some guy called Davidoff. I half expected some Radek loyalists to turn up from Air Force One (a film that is equally as daft but pulls it off due to a proper Die Hard conceit and an "Only He Could Pull It Off" star turn from Harrison Ford). I had went into this with high hopes as I don't bother too much with Rotten Tomatoes as I actually liked John Carter for example. The running time worried me. When a movie is around 85-90 minutes long, unless it is a comedy, then you know something is probably amiss. Most action movies/blockbusters normally aim for 2 hours in the cinema as this translates into 1 hour and 50 minutes on TV. More recent blockbusters go well over the 2 hour mark, which is a relatively new idea for modern action movies (Aliens and some Bond movies are exceptions I can think of) unless they had epic themed material (such as Dr Zhivago, Ben Hur etc). John Jnr was not the right kind of foil for McClane. He didn't need his dad's help and in fact you were never in doubt for one second about the outcome of the movie, which is sad. Plus what was their plan? (I may have missed this due to a comfort break!). Surely they had to threaten the USA with a nuke? Other daft things that annoyed me involved Chernoybl. Chernobyl is NOT in Russia. It is in the Ukraine. So where were their passports and visas? And Chernoybl is over 400 miles from Moscow, so normally a 7 hour drive, but on Russian dodgy roads it would surely take longer yet they get there at the same time as the helicopter or just after? Come on! Plus if you have read National Geographic you would know that it is still highly radioactive. I read somewhere it said that humans can't live there again for 20,000 years. Some people do work there but only for a few hours a month (in NBC suits!). Oh and a good idea to go swimming in the 'rainwater'. That would be highly radioactive I am sure! FFS we experienced acid rain in Scotland just after Chernoybl which damaged crops and poisoned animals! The Soviets were very lucky the wind was blowing away from Kiev that day or millions would have died. The dust cloud blew away and they began to dissipate (something that The Sum of All Fears got right, which I thought at the time was OTT - remember the bit when Ryan is running around Baltimore and they are telling him where he is in relation to the radioactive dust cloud?). I am sure I will buy this on DVD just to be a completist and I am sure I will grow to love it a wee bit more, but I can only give this **, and it pains me to do so, and probably I will know many who will give it only *. Where does the blame lie? John Moore? Skip Woods? They should have waited until they had the next idea for a Die Hard to make it a bit unique. By all means send McClane to Russia, but having him chase around Moscow and then fight in Chernoybl almost like a Call of Duty game isn't Die Hard. It is a generic action movie. Even if they had set it up as his son was kidnapped and McClane goes to the rescue (which is a movie cliche also but somehow it would have made for better opportunities for McClane to use his cunning as well as his fists) would have been better. Also the son should not have been his equal. Maybe they couldn't have given him another geeky/nerdy partner after 4.0 but to have John Jnr as an action hero just wasn't right. Overall I can't believe that after 4 good movies (1 classic and 3 very good I would say) they have jumped the shark and delivered a B-movie, which Die Hard never was. Even if they had made this was a small budget, Die Hard scripts have been clever, witty, smart and as I keep saying some idea/theme/gimmick which has made it feel new. I really hope they do make a final Die Hard just so this isn't McClane's last bow. But I don't hold out hope as I reckon word of mouth will kill it.
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Watch my spoof movie of FULL METAL JACKET here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCGRWVvM-Zo&feature=plcp&context=C31ca298UDOEgsToPDskJ4_UorjolrWTaxEGMj5GO0
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