Reported By:
| Edited By: Tushar Joshi |Source: DNA |Updated: Nov 21, 2013, 01:44 PM IST
Film: A Good Day To Die Hard
Actors: Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Yulia Snigir
Director: John Moore
Rating: **
It is 25 years since we last met the cocky, brash, arrogant yet somewhat likeable Irish American detective John McClane (Bruce Willis). A lot has changed over the years as we are introduced to him in this latest installment of the franchise. There is so much wear and tear not physically but character wise that we end up feeling sorry for the guy.
A Good Day to Die is the weakest Die Hard film in the entire series. Well, that doesn’t mean the predecessors were any good. In fact if you look at the graph of the films, barring the 1988 Die Hard, everything else that followed looked like an attempt to compensate for the lack of content by coming up with gimmicky titles(Die Hard 2, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Live Free or Die Hard and A Good Day to Die Hard).
There comes a point in the film when McClane reunites with his son Jack (Jai Courtney). It is a dramatic tense moment where the father-son duo gets to see each other after a long period. But the scene awkwardly falls flat, predicting the tone for the rest of the film.
Despite setting the film against the backdrop of Russia (we are not told why!), and bringing in the ever-so-easy bait of nuclear annihilation (the cold war card?) there is nothing new that director John Moore has to offer.
Both Willis and Courtney go through their routines like it were a dog show where instead of roll over-jump-fetch they do the shoot-duck-throw grenade act. Given the fact that it’s all about the CGI and number of cars being blown up, when Moore tries to play around with their interpersonal dynamics it comes out too forced and a late attempt to salvage the situation. Even the signature ‘Yippee-ki-yay, m*****f****r’ phrase sounds lame and obligatory .
A Good Day to Die Hard ends up embarrassing its fans making you to wish Willis would earn his bread and butter doing other roles and let John McClane rest in peace (R.I.P).
