A Good Day to Die Hard

has been on my watchlist for years but I’ve only gotten around to watching it until a few days ago. My reason for the delay includes the negative reception the movie got when it first released and seeing who made the movie. Directed by John Moore (Max Payne) and written by Skip Woods (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), this movie was practically dead on arrival. But with Bruce Willis retiring from acting and this being the only Die Hard movie I haven't seen, I decided to watch it and yeah, it's bad.

Where do I begin? This is a completely useless entry in the Die Hard franchise. It brings nothing to the table. Everybody sucks in this movie. The protagonists, the antagonists; they're all bad. McClane's son Jack is boring. This is when Hollywood really wanted to push Jai Courtney as the next big star so he kept getting cast in big movies (Jack Reacher, Divergent, Terminator Genisys, Suicide Squad, etc.) and he's not interesting. The villains are the worst in the franchise. The only thing I remember is one of the villains tap dancing while eating a carrot. The villain in Die Hard 2 was more memorable than this.

The story I guess involved McClane's son as a spy protecting a Russian political prisoner or something but considering how awful everything was, it was hard to care or even pay attention to whatever was happening. The Russian setting also didn't add anything for me. Why did Die Hard go international again?

If "Leave Free or Die Hard" was the last entry in the franchise, I would have taken it. That movie at least has good action and Willis still seemed to care about the role. This movie? Only reason why anyone would remember is that it has the Die Hard name attached to it.

A Good Day to Kill Your Franchise

I watch Die Hard 4 and 5 last week and I can say Die Hard 4 even with PG-13 is way better than Die Hard 5 with R rated. I don't know why most of Die Hard fans don't like the fourth movie but for me it pretty good sequel. I love to watch Die Hard 4. The story is too far from the original film but still worked for the plot of Die Hard film. The chemistry between Bruce Willis and Justin Long is better than Bruce Willis and Jai Courtney in Die Hard 5.

The helicopter/ car chase scene in Die Hard 4 is so intense and the scene when McClane drive a car to take down the villain helicopter is so damn cool to me.

I like the concept of the fourth movie with the analog hero against the cyber terrorists. McClane is a old cop but still kick ass. He don't understand any IT stuff but in this movie he must deal with this.

The main villain in Die Hard 4 is not memorable like the villain in the first one film but still okay for me. His character is so simple but not the worst it way better than the villain in Die Hard 5.

The favourite action scene in Die Hard 4 for me is the scene McClane VS. Maggie Q's character that so badass scene.

Thank you 20th Century Fox for being cool.

The film started off at a very high pace. The original took it's time, establishing characters and the setting. In this case, the film assumes you kind of know the deal by now. Continuity-wise if you knew nothing about Die Hard you could follow along just as easily as anyone else and I think that is the biggest flaw to be had. While it still feel "Die Hard", the scriptwriters missed a great opportunity to establish a sense of repercussions for John McClanes actions or at least to flashback through the series. Not even referencing past films kind of downplays the franchise status of the film.

Bruce Willis was spot on with his performance and delivered some good and not so good one liners. No fault on his part but it was if the script writers went a little out of balance with the wisecracking side vs the badass side of John McClane. It was quite minor though and overall his acting chops were a treat to watch. Courtney Jai's character took some getting used to but he fit the role of a McClane Jr. well. The chemistry between the two stars was good and only grew stronger as the film progressed. The villians did well but it seems by this point the original set too high a bar for any other entry to ever reach.

The plot served it's purpose and got the job done. It got better as time went on but the writers could have done a much better job of introducing us to McClane junior. The father/son bonding arc was good and added depth to the story. There few minor twists and the second half of the film was much stronger than the first. The characters themselves weren't tampered with and they pretty much were strong enough to overcome some of of the plots weakness. Skip Woods wrote the general plot who has penned such "gems" as the A-Team, Wolverine:Origins, and the upcoming Kane & Lynch adaption.

The sound design was phenomenal. The action was loud when it needed to be but never came across as messy. No lines were garbled and the mixing was perfect in every scene. The music stood out as being different than the other entries in the series and added more to the new setting of a different country. I recommend watching it in a theatre with good speakers.

The direction stood out also stood out as a strong point. During low actions scenes the closeups capitalized on the actors strong points and fueled the emotion in these scenes. The high action scenes weren't ever hard to follow. The cinematography was great but narrow in scope considering the location of the film. Any scene with slow motion stood out as most memorable. They was more attention to detail than any other slo-mo scene in my memory. John Moore is no stranger to the technique having used it in both Max Payne and Behind Enemy Lines. He seems to have a great vision of how a scene should play out though and does a fantastic job when the script is properly written.

While there is definitely room for an expansion the film left the future of the franchise quite ambiguous. The story felt quite contained and did flesh out a few details. By the end though, the audience really wasn't that far removed from where they were in the beginning. The film stacked against all other retro-action flicks takes the gold and on it's own merits alone is still definitely worth the price admission.

TL;DR

• 8ish/10

• the actors/director did well

• Skip Woods is a terrible script writer

• watch it in a theatre with decent speakers if thats an option

Beyond the poor dialogue ('I'm on Vacation!' x 100) and fairly weak plot of this film I realized something; This isn't a traditional die hard movie. Yes, John McClane ends up in the middle of a situation that warrants him busting out his old school cop antics, but the thing that seemed to be most lacking was:Him/His Family being in grave danger.

"But his son was in danger!" I hear you saying. No, he wasn't. His son was a super-spy that obviously had his shit together, by 20 minutes into the movie he knew he was in past his depth and that his son could easily handle what was happening, but was tagging along for the ride.

This is not the John McClane we know and love from previous films. When shit got hot, John McClane Sr. was there to save the day. Duck behind a table? Fuck that, John McClane picks up weapons and fires at the enemies with one hand and flips them off with the other. Sees his son for 12 seconds? Steals a truck and takes on a tank with an SUV while talking to his daughter on the phone, in a buddy-comedy type situation.

How could this have been made better? Instead of him chasing after the badguys chasing after his son, there should have been a sequence of a prison transport being taken by the bad guys and John being the only one to see it and going after it, only to find out his son is an amazing spy. He helps out his son in need and then tags along for the ride- much more Die Hard.

I decided to give this a watch after I came home from work yesterday. I was tired and just went with this movie because I’ve seen the other films and this is also the last die hard movie in the franchise so why not? Well it was pretty bad. I mean this felt like it was just Bruce Willis showing off way too much in terms of him surviving every type of accident and injury he sustains plus the car chase felt way too long. I mean it felt like they did this on purpose just to stretch the runtime. Also besides the prolonged action sequences, there’s not really much in terms of character development and story because then we get to the final act which just crams in way too much action to end it there. What a shame!

I saw Die Hard 5 recently, and I was not satisfied with it. It didn't work as a Die Hard movie. It did not even work particularly well as a simple action movie. But what went wrong? Here is my opinion.

• It had a miniscule, boring plot with no surprises.

Seriously, it had only one twist, and that was executed so poorly, I did not even bat an eyelash at it. The plot moved from A to B which in better films means that it stayed focused and did not introduce useless subplots, but here, the whole ordeal came off as boring, since every other aspect of the film was so horribly flawed, that it directed your attention to the nonexistent plot.

• It did not have exciting action scenes.

At the beginning, the car chase was nothing special. At the middle, none of the shootouts were special. At the end, there was only one thing that made me go "well, this was a good idea" (more on this later), but nothing else was special. The heart of the film should have been these amazing scenes of chases, hand to hand combat, shootouts... but the movie failed miserably at this department too.

• The "family drama" aspect of the movie was cringe-worthy.

The exchanges between McClane and his son on how McClane was not a good father because he always worked? The idea is older than dirt, it doesn't work with the McClane character, and the delivery of these lines was so godawful that this aspect hurt the movie so bad, I almost walked out of the theater. Ah, and the ending...? But more on that later.

• It doesn't feel like a Die Hard film, the McClane character was completely omitted.

This is not McClane. There was no McClane in this film. The very ide of the McClane character is that in the heat of combat, in a tense situation, he always comes up with a clever idea on how to use his surrounding environment to outwit the bad guys. Here, in Die Hard 5? We get to witness 1 such idea. ONE (when he released the truck in the helicopter to screw with its balance). And even that one is not that good to warrant remembering it say 4-5 years from now. Whereas I can name such scenes from the first 4 movies without having to stress my brain. They are just that iconic. In this movie however, McClane did nothing noteworthy. They did not give him a tough baddie to defeat one on one. They did not give him any chance to demonstrate his iconic quick wits. Conclusion: McClane was not present during the events of this movie.

• Lack of an exciting ending.

The coup de grace for the movie was the ending. At first, I didn't even know what the russian chick was trying to do by driving the copter straight into the building. And then they jump away, and... the end? Oh, it's not the end yet, but... what is this? The final sequence (the meeting at the airport) is so out-of-place and out-of-character for everyone involved, that it seriously hurt watching it. So on top of all mentioned problems, the movie goes out not with a bang, but a whimper. How fitting...

Do you agree with me? Disagree? I really want to hear some opinions on the movie!

Here is the trailer for which is a shameless Die Hard ripoff (which I have no problem with). This movie looks really fun and has a great premise. It's 'Die Hard in the White House' but that's just fine.

Now for those that know, A Good Day to Die Hard has gotten very lackluster reviews. And deservingly. It's lackluster. Not bad. Not terrible. But not good either. The entertainment comes from the comedy and the ludicrously of it all rather than from suspense or tension.

What you may or may not know also is every Die Hard movie before A Good Day to Die Hard has been another script (or some other work) adapted to become Die Hard. It seems that this was exactly the script that should have been converted into Die Hard 5.

John McClane visits the White House to have a dinner with the President for being an american hero. Then the rest has written itself as you can see by the trailer. It was a perfect John McClain movie and would have put him back in a scenario that fit his character.

Granted, this movie looks amazing (from an action film standpoint) and I will be seeing it but I think FOX missed out on this one big time.

It's one of their better HITB episodes in 2013, for me.

They went over the checklist of what makes a Die Hard movie, and the problems that the 5th (fifth) Die Hard movie has. They also talked about the other Die Hard sequels.

Link for anyone that hasn't seen the HITB episode:

This contest is closed.
And the winner is ! Congrats, I'll be sending you a mail shortly :).

This is a contest for a Digital Movie Code. I have codes for seven different movies, and I would like to do one contest per night for each code. The movies are all different, and they are all newer releases. My husband and I don't use them, so I thought it would be fun to give them away to someone who will!

If you haven't used or heard of these codes, it's the full movie in HD. You don't need anything special to watch it on the computer. This movie in particular can be watched with iTunes if that's your thing.

RULES:

1. Have an intro.

2. Tell me what your favorite Bruce Willis movie is.

3. Third Thing.

4. Link me something over 100 dollars on Amazon.

5. Raffle phrase: Yippee Ki Yay Mother...penguin?"

Contest will end tomorrow before I post the next contest. I will send the winner a private message with the code + instructions for using said code.

But it's not really something I super looking forward to seeing this year?

I'm waiting for Iron Man 3.

Just went and saw it at Shaw Theatre and the censoring affects all the f-bombs. Basically they cut the entire audio track and insert something that sounds like the words "cheap pet". They also inexplicably fast forward a line that I can only assume was full of f-bombs. Most jarring film-going experience ever! Beware.