In this, the fifth installment of the Die Hard franchise, John McLane (Bruce Willis) jets off to Russia to reunite with his long lost son Jack (Jai Courtney) and winds up in the middle of a secret CIA operation. Sounds like a good enough premise for an action film. Too bad the film then spins its wheels as John and Jack shoot their way out of one preposterous jam after another before winding up at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant for a final showdown with the bad guy (and girl). Despite his age (the source of several jokes in the film), Willis has little trouble returning to the role that he played so well in four previous outings. But that’s about all this film has going for it. McLane often repeats jokes (“I’m on vacation!” he says on more than one occasion after some death-defying escape). The father-son tension quickly grows tiresome and the aforementioned finale simply requires too much of a suspension of disbelief.
This article appears in Feb 13-19, 2013.
It might be a good day to die hard, but it’s not a good day to watch this movie. Unless you’re a huge huge huge huge huge huge die hard fan, and you don’t care what they put up on the screen as long as its called die hard. In this case, then you might be satisfactorily content with this movie.