Rarely has a movie soured my day so much as this terrible sequel to a franchise that, while not entirely flawless with all its installments, has still delivered some pretty solid entertainment and fantastic action.
Needless to say that "Die Hard" is the best action movie ever made, and while the sequels are not as universally loved, all of them featured some continuation to Bruce Willis' character of John McClane in a witty script and some pretty damn cool and innovating action scenes.
All of that is gone out the window (which may or may not relate to a scene from the movie) with this new installment in the Die Hard franchise, with the not-too-clever title of "A Good Day to Die Hard".
Skip Woods relays screenwriters Steven E. de Souza, Jonathan Hensleigh and Mark Bomback's (among others) tasks of feeding John McClane smart one liners and coming up with clever and deceptive terrorist plots. And boy did he drop the ball.
The script is, for lack of a better word, idiotic. Any semblance of McClane's previous heroics (at Nakatomi Tower, Dulles Airport, New York and the entire USA) is largely ignored, and the only link or mention of anything previously seen in the franchise is Lucy's brief and pointless appearance (though welcome, since it's Mary Elizabeth Winstead). The characters speak dialogues that highlight the obvious, and not just that, they actually repeat information that was said BY THE SAME CHARACTERS. And Skip Woods has done something that should be considered a crime against cinema: He has written John McClane as a completely unlikable character. Gone are his witty one-liners, replaced with cliché lines such as as "guess who?" and others that would make Arnold Schwarzenegger feel embarrassed. Gone is his down to earth, pragmatism and his heroic, though believable and survivable, feats. And gone is his actual usefulness within the plot.
The acting itself is generic, at best. Bruce Willis acts shamefully on auto-pilot, and doesn't do that much justice to his character. But how can he, when he is so badly written, that it's beyond saving?
The story is intergalactically stupid. Exposition arrives late; a lot of guns, devices and elements are featured and mentioned, but rarely, if ever, used; the bad guys are more incompetent and disposable than the ones in Rambo movies; the third act twist drops like an anvil without making any actual sense; and, in the end, the story itself matters so little, you give up halfway through it. That, and you also forget any actual semblance of a challenge.
One might justify all of this by saying: "hey, you're not going to watch it for the plot. You just want to see the action scenes". That is an insult to a franchise that has been built around tense and challenging plots, great characters and competent scripts.
But, even still, for those who don't give a care about the plot, or for those that it has failed to interest them (which is most likely), they might find solace in the action.
Enter director John Moore, and witness the total demise of the film. His rushed, dirty and incompetent direction fails incredibly, with poorly shot frames, unnervingly shaky camera and editing and, overall, not a single care for making the action coherent or awe-inspiring. Say what you want about "Live Free or Die Hard", at least the action looked gorgeous, particularly that non-sensical but still awesome shot of a police car crashing into a helicopter. Here, the chases, gunshots and punches look so flat and boring, that there's truly no standout action sequence.
Yes, people. John Moore has managed to make the image of a truck hanging chained to a helicopter, pulling it down, look complete and utterly boring. Moore tries to add some call backs to the original Die Hard, with a shot of the main villain falling to his death and John McClane crashing into a wall of glass, but the damage has already been done, and no homage can save this mindless spectacle, most especially the endless slow-motion shot of the McClanes jumping away from the exploding helicopter.
This schlock is what you find in mindless action blockbusters that gourmet critics love to ravage to pieces. The thing was, the original "Die Hard" was completely the opposite of that type of movie. It was smart, tight and interesting, the villains were an actual threat, the hero was vulnerable and believable, the characters had heart, the action was never over the top, the explosions were not the trump card of the film, and it was on Christmas. The sequels, while lacking on some of these element, didn't lack on all of them.
Positive aspects include the stupidly amusing goon that liked to dance, whatever his name was. No, don't get me wrong, he's garbage. But at least he had the better (though still crappy) lines, and was somewhat interesting to watch. Also, a fun and active score by Marco Beltrami, filling the shoes of late Michael Kamen overachieves to a bad film.
I sincerely wanted to like this film, as I love the previous four of the franchise and was able to forgive the flaws it would have if it was fun, exciting and awe-inspiring. It wasn't.
If you're among those who thought "Live Free or Die Hard" was bad, "A Good Day to Die Hard" is its more obnoxious little brother. Len Wiseman, John McTiernan, Steve E. de Souza, where were you when we most needed you?
Needless to say that "Die Hard" is the best action movie ever made, and while the sequels are not as universally loved, all of them featured some continuation to Bruce Willis' character of John McClane in a witty script and some pretty damn cool and innovating action scenes.
All of that is gone out the window (which may or may not relate to a scene from the movie) with this new installment in the Die Hard franchise, with the not-too-clever title of "A Good Day to Die Hard".
Skip Woods relays screenwriters Steven E. de Souza, Jonathan Hensleigh and Mark Bomback's (among others) tasks of feeding John McClane smart one liners and coming up with clever and deceptive terrorist plots. And boy did he drop the ball.
The script is, for lack of a better word, idiotic. Any semblance of McClane's previous heroics (at Nakatomi Tower, Dulles Airport, New York and the entire USA) is largely ignored, and the only link or mention of anything previously seen in the franchise is Lucy's brief and pointless appearance (though welcome, since it's Mary Elizabeth Winstead). The characters speak dialogues that highlight the obvious, and not just that, they actually repeat information that was said BY THE SAME CHARACTERS. And Skip Woods has done something that should be considered a crime against cinema: He has written John McClane as a completely unlikable character. Gone are his witty one-liners, replaced with cliché lines such as as "guess who?" and others that would make Arnold Schwarzenegger feel embarrassed. Gone is his down to earth, pragmatism and his heroic, though believable and survivable, feats. And gone is his actual usefulness within the plot.
The acting itself is generic, at best. Bruce Willis acts shamefully on auto-pilot, and doesn't do that much justice to his character. But how can he, when he is so badly written, that it's beyond saving?
The story is intergalactically stupid. Exposition arrives late; a lot of guns, devices and elements are featured and mentioned, but rarely, if ever, used; the bad guys are more incompetent and disposable than the ones in Rambo movies; the third act twist drops like an anvil without making any actual sense; and, in the end, the story itself matters so little, you give up halfway through it. That, and you also forget any actual semblance of a challenge.
One might justify all of this by saying: "hey, you're not going to watch it for the plot. You just want to see the action scenes". That is an insult to a franchise that has been built around tense and challenging plots, great characters and competent scripts.
But, even still, for those who don't give a care about the plot, or for those that it has failed to interest them (which is most likely), they might find solace in the action.
Enter director John Moore, and witness the total demise of the film. His rushed, dirty and incompetent direction fails incredibly, with poorly shot frames, unnervingly shaky camera and editing and, overall, not a single care for making the action coherent or awe-inspiring. Say what you want about "Live Free or Die Hard", at least the action looked gorgeous, particularly that non-sensical but still awesome shot of a police car crashing into a helicopter. Here, the chases, gunshots and punches look so flat and boring, that there's truly no standout action sequence.
Yes, people. John Moore has managed to make the image of a truck hanging chained to a helicopter, pulling it down, look complete and utterly boring. Moore tries to add some call backs to the original Die Hard, with a shot of the main villain falling to his death and John McClane crashing into a wall of glass, but the damage has already been done, and no homage can save this mindless spectacle, most especially the endless slow-motion shot of the McClanes jumping away from the exploding helicopter.
This schlock is what you find in mindless action blockbusters that gourmet critics love to ravage to pieces. The thing was, the original "Die Hard" was completely the opposite of that type of movie. It was smart, tight and interesting, the villains were an actual threat, the hero was vulnerable and believable, the characters had heart, the action was never over the top, the explosions were not the trump card of the film, and it was on Christmas. The sequels, while lacking on some of these element, didn't lack on all of them.
Positive aspects include the stupidly amusing goon that liked to dance, whatever his name was. No, don't get me wrong, he's garbage. But at least he had the better (though still crappy) lines, and was somewhat interesting to watch. Also, a fun and active score by Marco Beltrami, filling the shoes of late Michael Kamen overachieves to a bad film.
I sincerely wanted to like this film, as I love the previous four of the franchise and was able to forgive the flaws it would have if it was fun, exciting and awe-inspiring. It wasn't.
If you're among those who thought "Live Free or Die Hard" was bad, "A Good Day to Die Hard" is its more obnoxious little brother. Len Wiseman, John McTiernan, Steve E. de Souza, where were you when we most needed you?