Film Review: A Good Day To Die Hard

image from the IDMB site

Went and saw the latest offering from the DIE HARD franchise on Saturday with the lovely Ishbel, who is a big fan of the movies and indeed of Mr Willis.  Me I can take or leave him although my favourites with him were the TV series Moonlighting and the movies  Hudson Hawk, The Fifth Element, Tears of the Sun and Red - but the whole ensemble cast was outstanding and funny in that last one.

Die Hard, I have been able to take or leave but did really enjoy the one set in New York with Samuel L Jackson and Jeremy Irons although the rest of the cast weren't so good but the interaction between Willis, Jackson and Irons were great, every time.  Even the first DIE HARD movie and I suspect the others too, although can't remember that much about them, was the bullet speed of the dialogue.  It was sharp, it was funny and it was brilliantly delivered.

A Good Day To DIE HARD had, like it's predecessors, lots of Boom and Bang but absolutely little in the way of dialogue and certainly not delivered with bullet speed. Nor did I think it was sharp, or funny and it was most definitely not brilliantly delivered.  It honestly seemed to me as if Mr Willis was a bit tired with the whole thing.

It opens with him in New York honing his firing skills in an underground range and being approached by a scruffy looking cop with the ubiquitous NYPD badge hanging around his neck carrying a file.  The file as it turns out is on Maclean's son who is in a Moscow jail awaiting trial on a murder charge and Maclean feeling sorry for himself as he recalls never being there for his kids, so it's all his fault.  Oh, Oh, first warning shot across the bows here then.  John Maclean feeling sorry and guilt ridden, yeah, we know he is getting older, the scruffy cop calls him grandpa (sic) and this might explain his  guilt, But FFS it's John Maclean there isn't a sorry bone in his body!

And that's another thing, you know if you follow my blogs that I don't swear a lot, not because I don't, swear like a trooper at work and where appropriate and as one of my niece's said to me a while back, Unky Tom, sometimes you just need to use a 'good Fuck' and she's right of course, some situations and dialogue just aren't the same if there isn't a 'good fuck' in there somewhere and there has been plenty of that in the past in the DIE HARD franchise and it wasn't out of place, but the best we got in this was 'Let's go and kill us some bad guys' between Mr Maclean and his wayward CIA operative son! And not a Yipee Ki Aye to be heard anywhere throughout the too long ninety seven minutes the movie was on, even when the baddy was professing his love for westerns while doing his impression of the next person to be voted of from Strictly Come Dancing/Dancing with the Stars....

Oops just given a bit of the plot away, never mind.... Maclean is driven to the airport to go and help his son in Moscow, by his daughter and they are professing their undying love for each other and then he is in the back of a Taxi in a traffic jam in Moscow, outside the courtroom and then it's boom bang a bang for the next 85 minutes with pretty much drivel for dialogue and me wishing Ishbel had left me to my nap......

Apparently we can't wait for his next outing in GI Joe and @JuliaRBarret is bullying me into watching Loopers too, come on ladies 'gies a break will ya'

So from me I give it a 1 out of 5 and
Ishbel gives it a 5 out of 5