A Bad Day to Die Hard

The latest installment in the DIE HARD franchise was met with disappointment when all was done. Did the franchise lose its steam or, rather, were poor decisions made along the way and a red flag either ignored or unrecognized? I don't want to trash the entire movie. I think the story in general had some good twists, although the script just didn't hold up. But Skip Woods was hired to write it: what was the basis of believing he could deliver something stellar? SWORDFISH from 2001 or THE A-TEAM from 2010? Then there was John Woods, director of good things like BEHIND ENEMY LINES (2001) and FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX (2004), and duds like MAX PAYNE (2008). He is not tent-pole or franchise talent. He needs smaller projects to have a chance at shining.

So where did A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD go wrong beyond talent? There was no fun or awesomeness in how the movie was introduced, first of all. The opening credits just rolled with short cuts of footage that kept no one engaged through curiosity or beauty. Then it was after the helicopter stunt in Moscow that you got the feeling this movie wasn't going to offer much more. But at a fundamental level, the running time of A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD, by far the shortest DIE HARD movie ever at a little over 90 minutes, should have given everyone the worry that the final cut was missing something.

Bruce Willis didn't seem like he even enjoyed himself. And why would he? He was tagging along behind his son. John McClane has control over and makes his own decisions based on situations he has no control over. In A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD, he was barely spearheading his own charge. There weren't enough sarcastic or humorous moments and those are the heart of DIE HARD. It's not so much the explosions. It's the moments John McClane goes, "Holy shi@!," before, during and after the explosions. You didn't get that same excitement from him that we've loved from the start of the franchise; that fight to keep going.

With DIE HARD, the more he's beaten, the more he gets up with an urge to get things done, sometimes sprinkled with some laughter for surviving or a, "F@#? you, bitch," for winning. He was barely scratched in this movie. A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD didn't give John McClane room to beat people up. DIE HARD shines when it's hands-on. Instead, for the most part, John McClane had a high-powered weapon to shoot with from a distance. There was one part, where he was pinned onto the hood of a SUV by a Russian motorist and he knocked the driver out once a confrontation began. The movie needed more of those moments.

Last of all, while the car chase in Moscow was shot well, the finale at Chernobyl looked ridiculously poor. The quarantined area that is Chernobyl is an awesome sight and its scenery should have been expanded and set during the day to give the movie some scope for the franchise's first international outing. There was no sense that they were in Chernobyl. The area is blocked off with levels of checkpoints in reality, so showing how everyone got in could have been exciting to watch. Some may argue that it would be impossible to assume all of what happened could happen during the day without anyone noticing. I say, the area is massive and cut-off; there's plenty of plausibility in that. Besides, everyone knows the authorities always arrive after shit has been dealt with.

Watching John McClane crawl through the pipes and decaying walls of Chernobyl during the day in a race to get out before the radiation becomes lethal should have been an extra 20 minutes for the movie. The expanded fists and kicks should have added another glorious ten minutes. At least we wouldn't have had a finale that looked like the empty parking lot and lobby of a hotel resort because there was nothing else to relate it to in the landscape.