A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)
Directed by John Moore
Iconoclastic, take-no-prisoners cop John McClane, finds himself for the first time on foreign soil after traveling to Moscow to help his wayward son Jack - unaware that Jack is really a highly-trained CIA operative out to stop a nuclear weapons heist. With the Russian underworld in pursuit, and battling a countdown to war, the two McClanes discover that their opposing methods make them unstoppable heroes.
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4 films that influenced A Good Day to Die Hard
What critics say influenced A Good Day to Die Hard
You have probably already assumed that the fifth Die Hard, A Good Day to Die Hard (how psyched do you think Joel Schumacher is that the most memorable line from his Flatliners is making a comeback?), is no insta-classic.
“Skyfall” gave us a 50th anniversary James Bond who seemed renewed and revitalized for another half-century of adventures, but “A Good Day to Die Hard,” coming in 25 years after the iconic action classic that launched the series, fails to do right by John McClane, the quippy, kvetchy NYPD detective played by Bruce Willis .
The score sounds like this generic rip-off blend of Thomas Newman 's " Skyfall " soundtrack and Hans Zimmer 's and James Newton Howard 's " The Dark Knight " soundtrack.
This stuff makes James Bond's jump in "Skyfall" from a 100-foot drop look credible.
A lengthy chase on the Moscow ring road throws entire fleets of Russian commuters under the proverbial bus, but still feels like an inferior copy of a similar sequence in "Skyfall," while director John Moore ("Max Payne") defaults to the ADD editing style that's only good for disguising how thinly-imagined this show really is.
Compare the uninspired “A Good Day to Die Hard” with the exhilarating “Skyfall” and you see the difference between pushing a franchise to riskier, more demanding highs and letting it slide.
As it turns out, re-watching the first three Die Hard films in anticipation of this new one is absolutely the last thing one should do - as the movie has exceedingly little in common with its predecessors and instead comes off as a cinematic cousin to such watered-down, egregiously slick contemporary action movies as xXx and Bad Company.
This desolate setting might have made for a portentous, atmospheric mood-setter, but is shot so indistinctly that it only serves to make a person long for 2012's underappreciated " Chernobyl Diaries ."
The story even pays a visit to Chernobyl, where the McClane boys take a bath in radioactive water, make bonding cracks about John's (ergo, Bruce's) baldness and bump into the tourists from last year's horror flick Chernobyl Diaries.