Yippee Ki-Yay Mother Russia
Starring: Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Rasha Bukvic, Cole Hauser, Yulia Snigir, Amaury Nolasco, Sergey Kolesnikov
Director: John Moore
2013 | 98 Minutes | Rated R
“Take it easy Oddjob, I’m on vacation.” – John McClane
A Good Day To Die Hard is making a lot of Worst Of lists this time of year. I saw it in the theater a while back and really didn’t think it was all that great but certainly not worth a “worst movie of the year” title.
John McClane (Bruce Willis) travels to Russia to track down his son Jack (Jai Courtney). Upon meeting up with his son, now a CIA agent, he is dragged into Jack’s fight against the Russian underworld.
I’m not normally one to complain about a movie getting to the action too quickly but A Good Day To Die Hard gives us no update on what McClane has been up to over the last six years. It just throws him into Russia, drops him face to face with his son who we haven’t seen since the first movie of the series 25 years earlier and expects us to follow along. All the while we have Jack muttering “Damn it, John.” and old man McClane yelling “Jesus Christ!”, “I’m on vacation!” and ‘Hey!” Get it? They have a strained relationship…
Bruce Willis yells just about every line he delivers and Jai Courtney just sort of mumbles his way through the entire movie.
Bruce Willis seems to be getting a little bored of the John McClane character. It’s really too bad because I think the audience is still there if they can manage to put out a decent movie.
Aside from being a little too mumbly, Jai Courtney holds his own. He looks plenty believable in a gun fight.
A handful of shaky action scenes, some mediocre CGI and some hokey father son dialogue later and John and Jack McClane are buddies again. They have successfully solved a case which didn’t even reveal itself until right before they killed the man responsible and then they walked off into the sunset.
To be fair, there were a few highlights for me along the way. As ridiculous as McClane driving off the bridge and on to the tops of the bunch of cars and trucks was, I kind of got a kick out of it. It was so stupid but it got me smiling. I also enjoyed the entire crap CGI helicopter sequence at the very end. The rest of the action is pretty much just John and Jack’s machine guns firing away.
Like I said before, A Good Day To Die Hard isn’t as terrible as many critics have made it out to be. It also isn’t very good. I think the main reason for so much hate is that the original Die Hard is such a beloved movie by action fan and non-action fans alike that to see something so clichéd and heartless put out feels like everyone involved just didn’t care about this badass cop that we’ve spent the last 25 years following on crazy adventure after crazy adventure. Rumor is there is one last Die Hard in the works. I sincerely hope they have learned their lesson and put something really great in front of us for John McClane’s farewell tour.
Action Movie Fanatix 