"The things we do for our kids...."
This is the line John McClane utters as he drives an SUV out of a flying helicopter (while it is still chained to it) to bring it down which makes it seem like the 4th or 5th helicopter that has been destroyed in the Die Hard series. There was nothing wrong with that sequence because there is always expected to be the cliche "line before big explosion" moment in a Die Hard movie.
No...what I had a problem with is that lines like that came about off far to often..almost as often as the amount of times we see Bruce Willis's 60+ year old body fly through walls, floors, and windows to only stand up and remind us again that he was "on vacation".
I wanted to enjoy AGDTDH because John McClane is such a great film character and despite his advancing age I STILL want to see him out there kicking ass. However, Willis is given nothing to work with in this installment of the series and that fault lies at the feet of the writers and director John Moore (Max Payne, other bad movies).
We follow John to Moscow, Russia where he is trying to find his son Jack McClane who supposedly has been arrested and is being tried for an assortment of crimes. One thing leads to another and we discover that Jack is really an undercover C.I.A. agent trying to move a prisoner who has evidence on a Russian politician/mobster/whateverheisweneverreallyfindout. In fact, there are so many villains in this film, it is hard to even tell who is the main one until the finale in the last 20 minutes or so.
Willis can still hold his own as McClane as he delivers funny one-liners and can still fire gun pretty well (I mean, it seems pretty easy when you are just firing a gun in one spot as henchmen continue file in and basically run into the bullets one by one). Jai Courtney is the biggest human flaw of the film as McClanes' son Jack. He spends most of the movie playing the "I had a bad relationship with my dad" card by calling his father by his first name and uttering the phrase "Damn you McClane!" one too many times. Much of this again is the fault of the writers but Courtney was just bad from start to finish anyway.
There is said to be plans to make a 6th and final Die Hard film to finish the series. I encourage this to go forward because John McClane deserves to go out on a positive note (or at least get a promotion within the police force I mean come on...the dude is like 65 and would have to be the most decorated cop on the force you would think).
The most famous line of the Die Hard series (which predictably was brought up again in this version) means to move on or get going in Native American dialect.
To the writers of "A Good Day to Die Hard" and director John Moore I quote John McClane himself in saying...Yippe Kai-Yay MotherFuckers!!!
1/5
