A Good Day To Die Hard

A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD

Director : John Moore

Year : 2013

Genre : Action

Rating : *1/2

Bruce Willis returns to our screens as the one man killing machine John McClane in 'A Good Day To Die Hard', the fifth installment of the now massively redundant 'Die Hard' franchise that has somehow become a parody of it's own former self. Starting in 1988, the 'Die Hard' series would create a movie star out of Bruce Willis and indeed transform the action genre into a much more thought provoking and cerebral category of motion picture than many of the more inferior action predecessors envisioned to be. Yes, the 'Die Hard' films were full of explosions and lots of bad guys being shot, but they also contained a great deal of character development, emotional drama and dare I say it, heart. If you read my list of my top 10 favourite Christmas films, you will know that 'Die Hard' features very prominently in the Cook Christmas household and for many years, I have loved the movie for it's pulse racing narrative and now iconic scenes. 'Die Hard 2' and 'Die Hard With A Vengeance' would continue the story of John McClane and while they may not be as good as the first episode in the franchise, they are still rip roaring good fun thanks to some memorable villains and fantastically elaborate staged set pieces.

However as happens with every good series, quality soon began to diminish and with the arrival of 'Die Hard 4.0' in 2007, I finally lost patience with the entire franchise. Bored by the Michael Bay - esque explosions and the complete irreverence for the laws of physics, 'Die Hard 4.0' would prove to be one of the biggest disappointments of the year for me. However, cinema ticket sales would say otherwise and despite some severe  critical slamming, the movie would become the most successful 'Die Hard' film to date, taking $383m at the worldwide box office. So inevitably a fifth film was inevitable and in 2010, 'A Good Day To Die Hard' was greenlit. Originally the film was going to be titled '24/7' with the intentions of a crossover with the popular TV show '24' with Keifer Sutherland reprising his role as Jack Bauer and that would have been infinitely more interesting than than what we would finally get. Replacing character and story with endless scenes of shooting, explosions and terrible acting, 'A Good Day To Die Hard' is not only the worst movie in the franchise so far but is also one of the worst action movies of the year. Bruce Willis may have made John McClane a star, but it does seem that he may also have killed the character for good with a performance that would rival 'The Room's Tommy Wiseau for pure incompetence.

For the first time in the series history, John McClane finds himself on foreign soil, travelling to Russia to help his wayward and estranged son Jack. Little does he know that his son is actually an undercover CIA operative who is out to stop an imminent nuclear disaster instigated by a powerful and formidable gang of terrorists. With machine guns in hand and armed with a heaping helping of terribly dull puns, John and Jack join forces to blast their way through Moscow and obliterate anyone who stands in their way. 

Director John Moore has the unbelievable talent of taking popular properties and franchises and destroying everything that made them so important in the first place. He did it with his diabolical remake of the seminal horror film 'The Omen', he did it with his motion picture adaptation of the hit video game 'Max Payne' and he has now done it with the beloved 'Die Hard' franchise. When will his reign of terror end? 'A Good Day To Die Hard' is as far from a 'Die Hard' film as is humanely possible and by teaming John McClane up with a sidekick, Moore completely demolishes the idea of the series, that of the one man army who does everything in his power to stop the evillest of organisations. Speaking of enemies, the villains in the movie are as generic as villains come; evil Russian communists who threaten to begin nuclear war with plutonium from the isolated Chernobyl plant. Not a Hans Gruber or Franco Nero in sight. When the antagonists are as ineffective and as dull as the protagonists, the stage is set for a cinematic car crash.

It seems that the tide has turned for the once great Bruce Willis and this may be the final stand for the iconic John McClane. I certainly hope so. As boring as the thousands of other generic action movies, 'A Good Day To Die Hard' is the cinematic death throws of a franchise that has clearly passed it's sell by date and maybe it is about time that it was finally put out of it's misery once and for all.