A Good Day to Die Hard

It’s been 25 years since the original Die Hard. The movie still holds up as a classic of the action film genre, and also produced some high-quality sequels (I even liked 2007’s Live Free or Die Hard, despite the fact that it went PG-13 and had a few jump-the-shark moments like that jet sequence). But even the best series reach a point where they just run out of gas. Most franchises that have been around this long (or even less time) would just start over, but Die Hard seems to be one that’s reboot-proof (I mean, can any anyone really replace Bruce Willis as John McClane?). So instead, we get another sequel, A Good Day to Die Hard.

This time around, the series leaves America for Russia, as John McClane travels to Moscow to help his estranged son Jack (Jai Courtney), who has gotten mixed up in a plot involving Russian criminals and politics. Almost immediately, some bad guys try to ambush the detained Jack, and the truth is revealed: Jack is really a CIA agent tasked with protecting Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch), a former Soviet arms dealer targeted by corrupt politicians. So when Komarov is captured, father and son McClane battle from Moscow to Chernobyl (yeah, that Chernobyl) to rescue him.

The problem with the movie isn’t that the formula is stale. It’s that it’s not there at all. Despite having the same characters, it doesn’t seem like a Die Hard film. Notably absent is the humor, Willis’ gruff, sarcastic wit and one-liners that made the past pictures so much fun (even McClane’s famous profane catchphrase seems misused here). Also missing is the everyman quality that made the character so appealing: in the earlier entries, McClane seemed like a regular guy who just happened to get caught in the middle of terrorists’ evil plans. He was always way outmatched by his enemies, and even though he’d save the day, he’d be beaten and bloody when the credits rolled. By Live Free or Die Hard, however, he became the prototypical near-indestructible action hero who barely looked fazed by his circumstances and even expected them. I could give it a pass then because the movie still had the humor, but A Good Day to Die Hard doesn’t even have much of that. And it’s hard to believe that a guy can walk away from so many explosions, shootouts, and falls from high places through things more unscathed than he could a quarter-century ago.

Another hallmark of the series has always been strong supporting roles, as Willis has had some effective allies (Dennis Franz, Samuel L. Jackson, and Urkel’s neighbor among them) and great villains (Alan Rickman, Jeremy Irons, Timothy Olyphant) to play off of. This time, Jai Courtney is effective as the younger McClane. At times, he arguably even seems more like the leading man in the action at hand, with Willis playing sidekick. Otherwise, though, there are no real memorable characters good or bad, with the lack of a strong villain really draining any conflict from the story (as does a mediocre plot twist late in the film).

The only thing the movie gets right is the action, which is quite well done. There's a nice balance of real (or at least real-looking) stunt work and computer-generated effects that are edited very efficiently, and none of it drifts off into the indecipherable muddle of so many modern action films (I’ll avoid the clichéd dig at Michael Bay). Diehard fans of the series will also catch an obvious homage to the first film in one scene, complete with the original’s score. This element of the movie keeps it from being a terrible experience.

All in all, this one's pretty average: not bad, not great. It’s only a letdown because it has the Die Hard name on it; if it had a different title, it’d just be your typical shoot ‘em up action flick starring Bruce Willis.