Hood_Man
Posts: 11270
Joined: 30/9/2005
|
Die Hard with a Blocked Carotid Artery, Die Hard from a Pulmonary Embolism, Die Harder Quicker, Hurry Up and Die Already, Dai Hard...
I never imagined when I was sitting in the cinema watching Arnie's The Last Stand a few weeks ago, that it would end up being the best of this year's Geriaction Hero Trilogy. Nor did I imagine when I was watching Stallone's Bullet to the Head that it would be knocked into second place in the category of least interesting action movie of the month.
Things start off well. An unimaginative but very loud car chase involving Jack being chase by a road train or whatever it is, through the streets of Moscow, with his Dad pulling up the rear yelling and screaming to nobody in particular, doesn't sound great on paper but I was captivated by it all the same. I did wonder whether the roads needed gritting however considering the cars were doing more 720 spins than Tony Hawk, but I've seen sillier things.
Unfortunately that's it for positives. The first thing that bothers me was how out of place McClane felt. In that first half hour or so I could imagine what it would be like if he was left entirely on the cutting room floor, and the film wouldn't lose focus. It would still be about a big, tough, shaven haired dude breaking a criminal out of court and into the safety of the CIA, and still would have featured a thrilling car chase along the way.
In fact if I didn't know any better, I would have assumed that this was in fact the result of Die Hard 5 being refashioned from another script, about a big, tough, shaven haired dude breaking a criminal out of court and into the safety of the CIA, with McClane Snr being crowbarred into the script every other page just to remind us it's his damn movie.
However, as my 5 second Google search tells me, it turns out this movie was in fact the first film in the Die Hard series to be written from scratch. Well, alright then...
The next thing that bugged me was the relationship between John's Snr &Jnr. Jack growing up with/without a workaholic and mostly absent father figure appears to have turned him into a problem child, then problem adult, then gun toting CIA operative with a permanent scowl. Straightforward enough, whether it's realistic or not doesn't bother me, in "Movie Land" terms it seems believable enough.
However, those involved seem to think we're stupid enough to need reminding of this by having Jack invoke the memory of Charlton Heston by screaming "Damn you John, damn you to Hell!" every 30 seconds.
I got it. I got it very, very quickly. Jack is calling his Dad John because he doesn't feel like John was a good father and therefore doesn't want to call him that, but we keep getting reminded of this so often that I started to wonder if this film was the result of a million goldfish sitting at a million typewriters attempting to produce a Die Hard script, only for the experiment to fail because one of the two goldfish responsible for editing it was on maternity leave and the sole remainder kept forgetting if he'd let one slip through the net. I didn't need to be reminded every minute for 90 minutes like I was playing the most boring game of Centurion ever. It wouldn't surprise me if they stole the concept from Michael Bay's 1998 movie Armageddon either.
At some point however, these issues seem to be abandoned in favour of a very unimaginative buddy movie relationship between today's younger guy and yesterdays Hero, making quips about being "Old School" or doing "James Bond Shit," and for the life of me I can't remember the moment when it happens (possibly just after or during a shootout with a helicopter gun ship). Despite apparently missing the most important years of his son's life through work and apparently not being a very good father, he somehow manages to turn around decades of bad blood and win his son over because "I'm your father Goddammit!" What could have been quite a touching bonding moment between two men instead became a skin crawling mess.
A real problem I have with films like this, is that if I'm not totally captivated by what I'm seeing, I become bothered with everything else. And this film did not captivate. Take the villains for instance. Not a single interesting attribute for any of them, except for the assembly line they seemed to be operating on. Twist after twist after needless twist, and nothing as memorable as the single villain formula and muscly henchmen of the previous films. Even Timothy Oliphant had a funny retort in 4.0:
John McClane: [covering the webcam] You think you can, uh, find a track where he is?
Thomas Gabriel: Detective, covering the camera with your hand does not turn off the microphone.
How about decontaminating a room full of 27 year old, incredibly deadly radiation with a blow torch? I have no idea if that's believable or not, it might actually be genuinely plausible, but to be told by Yuliya Snigir:
"This will remove the radiation, believe me."
No, fuck you, I don't believe anything you tell me. I don't even know who you are anymore.
Perhaps the biggest problem of all with this film is with John McClane himself. He's not John McClane. He's an old, out of shape Bruce Willis who at the age of 57 is now somehow at his most invincible. Maybe the radiation has given him powers? Is there a John McClane vs Wolverine spinoff in the works?
Die hard 4 received a lot of flack when it came out 6 years ago, and perhaps a lot of it was quite fair. It did at least make an effort to try and be a Die Hard movie however, with Bruce Willis really bringing John McClane back into action, slightly psychotic moments and all. There's never a moment here where I feel I'm watching the same character, it's just an unimaginative, one dimensional action hero who happens to be played by Bruce Willis.
If I had to pick two things I hate about this film, the first would be that the first trailer made it look rubbish, but the second one convinced me it might turn out ok. The second is that it proves just what a cynical, cold hearted person I am that I can write about things that annoy me so much easier than the things I love.
Damn you John. Damn you.
< Message edited by Hood_Man -- 18/2/2013 11:15:56 PM >
|
Printable Version
RE: My low expectations meant I quite enjoyed it. - 
) 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread