Any day is a good day to watch A Good Day to Die Hard

The early reviews weren’t too kind about the new Die Hard movie.  My twitter feed was abuzz with sayings like ‘this Die Hard dies dead and should labeled DNR’. It scored 1 tomato on Rotten Tomatoes.  After watching the movie a good retort is that any day is a good day to watch A Good Day to Die Hard.

To be clear, this is not a great movie.  It’s not Lincoln, Argo, Life of Pi or even Battleship.  It’s not as awful as the really (good) bad reviews are and it’s not as great as…well nobody is saying that it’s great, but it is good and entertaining if you have the right attitude. 

In the fifth outing for cop John McClane (Willis) he travels to Russia to see what the problem is with his son, Jack.  Unknown to John, Jack is deep undercover with the CIA who is helping a Soviet weapons manufacturer leave the country.  The Soviet is about to go on trial, where he already knows that the judges will convict him and that’s where the action starts.

‘The action’ is the best way to describe the movie because it’s not about plot, thought or caring.  The volume is loud, hundreds of cars get crashed, bullets fly everywhere, punches thrown with abandon and explosions occur every 5 minutes or so.   There is enough of a plot to make things move along, but not enough to make you worry about which person is doing what.  This is pure popcorn, dumbed down (but very entertaining!) entertainment.

At its best this movie reminds you of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with the father son elements.  (hearing people yell that I mention the two movies in the same article together in 3, 2, 1…)  The new Die Hard also is akin to Skyfall in that it subtly paid homage to its earlier movies.  (hearing people yell that I mention those two movies in the article together in 3, 2, 1)

What did bother me about the movie was the zooming in and zooming out of the Moscow city scenes.  The camera would focus in on a building then zoom out 30 city blocks.  This trick was done far too much in the first hour and took away the beauty that is Moscow.  Some carefully taken shots of Moscow sidestreets or daily life would’ve been better, but the zoom in/zoom out is trendy and ‘Bourne-esque’.

A Good Day to Die hard is as good as a sequel as Taken 2 was to Taken.  This is not the best Die Hard, but if you like the franchise you’ll enjoy this, just go in with the right attitude.

A view from the Ladies

My wife went me to the movie and enjoyed it too.  She was a big fan of Die Hard 4 and commented that she liked the new one because the characters didn’t change, there were some snappy one liners and it was lots of action.

A Good Day to Die Hard is rated R for strong language and violence.  Sad to say, but in our theater there was an 11 YO boy and another parent brought their 9YO girl.  Both ages were too young for this movie.