A Good Day to Die Hard would only be disappointing if I expected it to be good. And why would anyone expect that? Either you hated Live Free or Die Hard so it’s only getting worse, or like me you loved Live Free or Die Hard but know that the backlash was so strong this could only be a reactionary sequel. Also, it was made because Bruce Willis was available, not because anyone had a great idea for a new Die Hard.
This would actually be a perfectly acceptable generic Die Hard 5 if you could see it, but it just looks like crap. The first half of the movie is shot in the usual handheld shaky cam style, and every time they haphazardly zoom in and out of a wide shot it’s glaring how uncomposed the shots are. How could that possibly look acceptable to anyone in a big budget film? Plus all of Moscow is lit with that artificial blue tint and all the locations are cruddy, run down hovels. It makes you long for the glamorous days of Renny Harlin.
The Blu-ray actually improves the look considerably as the lighting and color comes across more deliberate. It’s still not a pretty film but there are some highlights of gold light or crisp city streets. A Good Day is also shot with that oversaturated look so it’s extra grainy on Blu-ray, but the saturated colors look better in HD than they did in a theater.
READ: CraveOnline’s exclusive interview with A Good Day to Die Hard screenwriter Skip Woods.
You get a sense from the introductions that this Die Hard is going to be no fun. John McClane (Bruce Willis) is introduced in a somber gun range scene, apparently at the precinct but it’s a barely dressed up vacant lot with a target range set up. He’s moping about his estranged son and it’s just so dour. I like the McClane family dysfunction but playing it this heavy is not Die Hard. But it’s nice that he gets along with Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) now.
So McClane goes to Russia to pick up his son Jack (Jai Courtney) and the film brightens up a little. Trying to speak Russian from a tourist language dictionary… classic McClane. It turns out Jack actually knew what he was doing getting involved with Russian criminals, because when John actually gets involved he messes up a big operation. McClane and son plowing through the streets of Russia would be fun if it were well shot. The shakycam lets up just enough to show off the money shots of practical stuntwork, but the scenes don’t build up to them. It’s just a sequence of cool stunts. They also cut to what looks like Bruce Willis in a box making jokes, not even minimally integrated into the action.
It’s maybe just enough Die Hard to see McClane pull crazy stunts like spinning a car around a missile and driving off an overpass with no regard for his own safety. I mean, if you had a problem with the Mack truck vs. fighter jet you won’t approve, but that’s who McClane is to me. Whatever it takes to save the day, and the more ridiculous it is, the more he overcompensates with humor.
READ: CraveOnline’s exclusive interview with A Good Day to Die Hard co-star Jai Courtney.
A Good Day to Die Hard really is the Die Hard 2 of the new Die Hard trilogy though. It’s how can the same shit happen to the same guy twice… twice? McClane is on CIA turf and he doesn’t care. Cole Hauser is the Dennis Franz of this Die Hard. McClane keeps screaming that he’s on vacation. I know, he was on vacation in Die Hard 1 too, but it feels more like a reference to the Die Hard 2 reference to Die Hard 1 than a direct reference to the original. I’m okay with the self-referential. It’s just interesting that the series rejected it so much after Die Hard 2, and now they’ve gone right back to that well three movies later.
I do think it’s nice and ridiculous the way McClane just picks up guns and starts shooting anonymous bad guys rappelling down the windows. Jack goes with it too. He just exchanges huge weapons with his dad because that’s what they do. Sadly, John McClane comes across as more of the old clown getting in the way, which is a shame. He’s useful in a few scenes using street tactics to navigate Russia, but mainly his heroics are a punchline to the real action heroes doing the serious mopey shaky cam “gritty” stuff. The idea that a son really could know more than his father would be interesting if they actually explored it. It’s not even as deep as the father who can’t connect but when he needs to save the day, he earns their respect. John is just along for the ride in this one. When he expresses fatherly regrets it feels like they wrote that scene the day they shot it, and totally shoehorned it in.
READ: CraveOnline’s original review says A Good Day to Die Hard “drops the ball.”
The plot is entirely predictable, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s the MacGuffin, but everything about finding Yuri’s secret files, and the betrayals and the open windows… the problem isn’t that it’s familiar, it’s that it’s just so uninspired. The climax is a fairly massive stunt with some large vehicles, and I figured out that this would probably be the big finish, but there was no reason it should have been. It’s not a creative idea, it’s just they had this vehicle and that vehicle and this location and they could blow all this stuff up, so let’s knock it out and call it a wrap. The cinematography clears up considerably about halfway through the movie, but it gives way to excessive CG animation. Only they’re not animating anything as cool as jumping off a collapsing freeway. They’re just animating John and Jack running through exploding hallways, because that’s what they do now instead of using stunt men.
There are some nice callbacks to Die Hard, not in an overtly referential way, although you may recognize the slow motion high fall and the glass shooting. I always like that. Shooting glass still works. There’s a wonderful bad guy character who we only see in two scenes. He hates Americans and he actually dances in front of the McClanes. We need more of that guy! That could have been this movie’s Hans Gruber.
READ: CraveOnline’s picks for The Top Nine Die Hard Knock-Offs.
So the Blu-ray has an extended cut, which doesn’t really seem extended because they’ve actually taken out Lucy McClane completely. Did they do that to make room for more character development or awesome action? Not really. There’s a funny bit where John and Jack are searching the trunks of Russian cars. John gets angrier on the shooting range when we first meet him. There’s still not enough tap dancing bad guy. If I ever watch A Good Day to Die Hard again, I’m more likely to watch the version with Winstead in it because I like her.
READ: CraveOnline’s exclusive interview with A Good Day to Die Hard director John Moore.
John Moore is really engaging to listen to on the commentary track. He’s got a friendly wit and what he says makes sense. It also speaks to a bit of the film’s disjointedness, how they piece together shots and sometimes actors have conversations not actually in the same scene together. It seems Moore is a guy who can manage it, and the scheduling demands come from higher up. Some might take his random joking about Russian toilet paper as a sign that he doesn’t give a damn, but I wouldn’t be that dismissive. I think he’s having fun with commentary clichés, probably knowing that nobody listens to these anymore, and making do with the realities of modern studio filmmaking. They all work from unfinished scripts and disjointed production schedules. If we want to change that, then we all need to get together and agree to pay more for movies where they finish the script first and release the film only when it’s truly ready, not a strategic release date. The one thing I will blame Moore for is the inherently poor decision to go handheld.
In the bonus features, I wanted to see if “Anatomy of a Car Chase” would explain what was happening in that car chase. It doesn’t really, but it explains why it appears so disjointed. For all the real stunts they did, they did many on massive green screen stretches of highway, and many different locations so no wonder it doesn’t flow as a continuous sequence. That’s not really an excuse. Movies are shot in disparate locations all the time, but it really seems the focus was on individual stunts, not cohesion.
This is a lot of effort to explore a bad sequel, which just speaks to my love of Die Hard. What makes this at all palatable are the little McClaneisms scattered throughout. I like Willis’s reaction to the cowboy line when we all know what he’s thinking. I like John and Jack repressing their emotions. I like that when John does finally say the line he’s doing it for his kid. Part of the magic of franchises is that even bad entries can inform a greater whole. Look how 2 Fast 2 Furious has paid off. If Die Hardest has Lucy and Jack teaming up to help their dad get Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) back, then this lackluster setup for Jack may prove worthwhile.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
