Oh man, a new Die Hard film, Yippy Kai Yay!!!!!...no, just no. This not a Die Hard Film, it's a Bruce Willis film that happens to have a character called John McClane in it, and it's rubbish. Check out my review to find out why I didn't like it after the jump....
It's
only 2 months into 2013 and so far we've had the fun but rather
disappointing Arnie comeback, The Last Stand, Stallone's non
Expendables actioner Bullet To The Head which I hear is a major flop
and now we have Bruce Willis' return to his iconic John McClane
character for Die Hard 5 or to give it it's full title A GOOD DAY TO
DIE HARD. It's this film we'll be looking at today. Now I love the
Die Hard movies, well 1-3 anyway, and I kind of enjoyed Die Hard 4.0
although I wish they would have left out Kevin Smith and McClane vs a
Fighter Jet, but Die Hard 4.0 is like Citizen Kane compared to this
pile of steaming dog shit. What the fuck were they thinking with this
film?
I
was super excited to see this as it was apparently taking the
franchise back to it's R rated roots for epic blood letting and
expletive film McClaneisms. What we actually got was a rather tame,
albeit sweary, DTV action film with a convoluted plot, an over
reliance on CGI and Willis showing that even though he's still fun to
watch, couldn't be arsed with this. Remember when Blade Trinity came
out and Wesley Snipe looked like he just showed up and couldn't give
a fuck about blade? Well that's what Willis has done here, he's there
for the paycheck and that's it.
I'll
try and explain the plot but i'm not entirely sure there is one.
There's something about a list, A Russian has a list, John McClane's
son Jack, gets himself arrested so he can rescue the Russian to get
the list. Back in New York, Sucre off of Prison Break hands McClane a
folder. He's tracked down Jack, so faster than you can say A GOOD DAY
TO DIE HARD, McClane is in Russia. There's a massive explosion and
Jack escapes custody with the Russian, he's chased by some non
de-script Eastern European bad guys, one eats carrots. John stops a
van containing Jack and the Russian, they say some father/son shit to
each other and Jack speeds off. John decides to give chase. Now to be
fair it's a pretty good chase scene, it's well handled and is done
for real, but it ends with McClane flipping his truck 17 times and
walking away without a scratch. Someone should call the continuity
police. John discovers that Jack is a CIA operative working deep
cover when they make their way to a safe house. They meet Cole Hauser
who as soon as we meet him gets his head blown off when the non
de-script villains attack the safe house. John, Jack and fake Franco
Nero (which he shall forever be known as) flee the safe house which
clearly wasn't very safe in the first place, and make a run for it,
they get caught and face off against a helicopter gun ship, but
manage to escape a massive skyscraper by jumping out of a
window...and surviving. Jack reveals something about Chernobyl to
which John gets it confuse with Grenoble, because John is thick as
shit and doesn't know what fucking Chernobyl is. So Jack and John go
to Chernobyl, one of the most irradiated places on earth, without any
form of protective clothing or gas masks, have a gun battle with some
typical Russian villains and discover that fake Franco Nero is
actually a bad guy who has hidden some plutonium in Chernobyl. Gun
fight, explosions and another battle with a CGI helicopter gunship
happens and in a move that seems there to only push the film to 90
minutes, we get almost 10 minutes of slow motion diving, jumping,
falling and explosions. Jack and John fall into a swimming pool which
is clearly radioactive, get out and make jokes about losing hair and
growing a third arm. They cut to them stepping off a jet back on U.S
soil and back into the arms of Mary Elizabeth Winstead's Lucy
McClane. The End.....
Now
I have to be fair to Die Hard 4.0, that is way more of a Die Hard
flick than this, that had witty one-liners, some really good action
sequences and McClane was still McClane, fuck, even RED is more of
Die Hard movie than this. This film has so many flaws and the writer
made so many dumb ass choices that he may have completely destroyed
the franchise. I was very mean to Taken 2 and I put it as my worst
film of 2012, It's a lazy film, badly made and they make some silly
decisions like throwing grenades onto roof tops, but this Die Hard
flick beat Taken 2 hands down in the dumb fuck awards, and I’m
surprised no other reviewer has brought up the whole Chernobyl thing,
YOU CANNOT WALK AROUND CHERNOBYL WITHOUT PROTECTION FROM RADIATION
AND NOT GET ANY FORM OF RADIATION POISONING! The writer of this, Skip
Woods, previously fucked up Hitman, The A-Team and X-Men and now he's
fucked up Die Hard, but not all the blame can go on Woods, Bruce
Willis had a hand in coming up with the story and some of the
dialogue and hack supreme, John Moore who hasn't made a good movie
since the enjoyable but unrealistic Behind Enemy Lines, shits all
over what Steven E. De Souza and John McTiernan gave us back in 1988.
Moore changed the aspect ratio that the film was shot in form 2.35:1
anamorphic scope to 1.85:1 non anamorphic and not in scope, which
gives it a cheaper look. It's the same aspect ratio as Police Academy
7. Then there's that fucking horrible blue tint that people put over
their films, I guess to make it look colder, what's with that?
Willis
doesn't do McClane in this, Willis basically Plays Mr. Church from
The Expendables, there is nothing about McClane in this film, none of
his mannerisms, his sarcastic whit and non of his one-liners, It's
also played as though McClane goes to Russia expecting to get into
trouble which is why he prepared the one catch phrase which is almost
ripped off from Clerks, he continually says 'im supposed to be on
vacation' which is like Dante's 'im not even supposed to be here
today', this goes to show the level of professional writing coming
from Skip Woods. His performance comes across as half arsed and
really drags the film down even more. Jai Courtney, who plays Jack
McClane, is very good however, as he knows that he's in a Die Hard
movie and that his character has to live up to his father's
reputation and he does come across as just as badass, he's good with
a gun, he knows his shit and even though the script is terrible, the
interaction between Jack and John is sort of believable. My biggest
problem however is how the writer has tried to turn McClane into Jack
Bauer, Bauer was a highly trained former Black Ops commando who ended
up as the head of the counter terrorism unit in 24, He was deeply
troubled and saw his entire family disband around him, he saw the
people he looked up to turn the country against him, he was
definitely a flawed hero. McClane does share some of the same
characteristics but John is an NYPD detective, He drinks, he smokes,
he has no regard for his superiors, he's separated from his wife
Holly but he still has his daughter and now he has his son, He is
also a flawed hero but in the last two films, they've kind of removed
those flaws, turning John into more of an every man, just a normal
guy, this isn't the McClane from Die Hard 1, 2 or With A Vengeance.
He used to have that smarmy grin, that fuck the world attitude, maybe
it's because he's getting older, but those characteristics that made
people fall in love with McClane don't exist in these modern Die Hard
Films. And for a man who has foiled 4 previous terror plots by
himself, why was he able to go to Russia without being flagged. His
son is deep cover CIA, as soon as his Passport was scanned he should
have been flagged by the CIA and when he landed should have been
remanded in custody to allow his son to fulfil his mission. Again
this is very bad writing.
I do
have to give the film some props though, the action is well handled
when it's not a shit ton of pixels and the sound is incredible, the
gunfire sounds epic and on a home theatre system it would kick ass,
the explosions and car chases are well handled especially that epic
truck chase even though it's hugely unbelievable, but this isn't a
Die Hard Film. It's a generic action film which we've seen loads of
times before with no memorable villains and an almost incoherent
plot. So hopefully if they do make another Die Hard, they ignore the
events of this as McClane would surely have died of radiation
poisoning.
So
to end, A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD is crap, there are absolutely no
redeeming features to the film, it looks like a DTV movie from the
Bauer/Martinez, Image camp of action film making, nowt wrong with
that, they know what they are, but a huge studio film with a budget
of $92,000,000 should not look like this, Die Hard should be set in a
single location with a memorable villain and as much violence and
profanity you can throw at the screen, McClane needs to smoke, he
needs to drink and he needs to be JOHN FUCKING McCLANE!. This film
infuriated me so much, but at least I've got G.I Joe Retaliation and
Fast and Furious 6 to look forward to this year. A GOOD DAY TO DIE
HARD gets two stars, 1 for the practical action scenes and 1 for the
sound editing.
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