Plot
John McClane travels to Russia to help out his seemingly wayward son, Jack, only to discover that Jack is a CIA operative working to prevent a nuclear-weapons heist, causing the father and son to team up against underworld forces.
Storyline
Iconoclastic, take-no-prisoners cop John McClane, for the first time, finds himself on foreign soil after traveling to Moscow to help his wayward son Jack - unaware that Jack is really a highly-trained CIA operative out to stop a nuclear weapons heist. With the Russian underworld in pursuit, and battling a countdown to war, the two McClanes discover that their opposing methods make them unstoppable heroes.
Trivia:
The first Die Hard film to be shot on Fuji film stock. The previous four were shot on Kodak. See more »
Quotes: John McClane:
[from trailer]
Need a hug? John McClane Jr.:
We're not a hugging family. John McClane:
Damn straight! See more »
User Review
Bruce Willis does what he does best, but this is quite simply one of the worst days of the 'Die Hard' series
Rating: 5/10
Our hearts go out to Bruce Willis. Truly. Six years after successfully
restarting the most important character of his entire movie-making
career, Willis has to watch it all crash and burn to the ground with
this loud, dumb and plain boring fifth chapter, the erroneously-titled
'A Good Day to Live Hard'. Indeed, while its immediate predecessor
'Live Free or Die Hard' banked on a winning formula of old-school
heroics with new-age sensibilities, this sequel is firmly stuck in the
past – and the worse thing about it is that it would only be passable
by the standards of an 80s action movie.
Truth be told, Willis isn't at all the reason why this fails to be a
good day for the 'Die Hard' franchise. At the age of 57, the man can
still run, carry a mean weapon and kick ass – not to mention his
trademark squint and unflappable wisecracking attitude. To put it
simply, Willis is still very much the John McClane we've loved in the
80s and 90s and even in the very last movie before this one. But much
as Willis tries, he is severely let down by a toxic combination of weak
scripting and even weaker directing – the former of which by Skip Woods
and the latter by John Moore.
Little in either Woods' or Moore's filmography suggests that they are
capable of rising above mediocrity, and this exercise in blandness is
proof of that foolish consistency. Let's start with Woods' script,
which clearly thinks it can be a 'Mission Impossible' by way of 'Die
Hard' – so instead of putting the New York City detective in his home
turf, or for that matter, his home country, decides to transport him
all the way to the Moscow to wreak havoc. The excuse? To reconnect with
his long lost son, Jack, who has apparently turned bad and is now
imprisoned in Russia.
Nowhere in the rest of the story does Woods manage to convince us that
the change in location is worth the while. Even though we are now well
into the 21st century, Woods still seems stuck in the last, so not only
are the good guys and bad guys drawn along the lines of Americans and
Russians respectively (cue the stereotypes about both nationalities),
the plot has something to do with as archaic an institution as
Chernobyl. Oh yes, we're back to foiling some nasty Russian's nefarious
plan of using the uranium from the site to build weapons of mass
destruction.
To make matters worse, Moore is too daft to realise that the very
premise in itself strains credibility. How else can you explain why
following scene after scene of destruction around the Russian capital,
there is no sign of any law and order agency? Are we supposed to
believe that the police are too busy or nonchalant to care about some
highway chase that decimates pretty much every one of the city's
infrastructure it comes across? Or that no authority responds to some
helicopter firing round after round after round into a high-rise
building? We like that our action movies are escapist, but not when
they ignore every shred of common sense simply for expediency.
The fact that we pay attention to these details is in itself telling,
for despite a frenetic pace that goes from scene after scene of action,
the movie remains a bore. Shots are fired, things get blown up and
people get killed from time to time, but at the end of the day, all
that action is staged so unimaginatively that it fails to even interest
– let alone excite – you. The pacing within each sequence is too
monotonous, the sound seems perpetually cranked on loud, and the
weaponry – plus an over-used helicopter – just gets tiresome too
quickly. As if to compensate for the lack of any genuine thrills, the
climax goes over- the-top, but like the rest of the movie, grows so
incredulous – especially in slo-mo – that it is just laughable.
Ironically, what passes as John McClane's wise cracks is anything but
humorous. Most of McClane's lines are in the context of his father-son
relationship with Jack (Jai Courtney), but are hardly witty or
engaging. They are also frustratingly repetitive, consisting of John
lamenting how Jack nary shows him any respect as a father, or John
lamenting how he had expected no more than a vacation in Moscow, or
some inane topic like whether they will grow a third hand after
stepping into Chernobyl without any protective suit. If John's lines
are horrid, the rest of the characters can be no better – and what
really takes the cake is when John's nemesis Alik (Rasha Bukvic) talks
about how he used to be a pretty good tap dancer whom no one
appreciated.
Even more lamentable is how this instalment, if played right, could
have been an exciting new page for the 'Die Hard' series, with John
passing the baton to his CIA operative of a son Jack. Yet this fifth
chapter is easily the worst 'Die Hard' entry and quite possibly might
sound the death knell for the franchise. If John McClane had a penchant
for landing in the wrong place at the wrong time, then 'A Good Day to
Die Hard' is Bruce Willis' unfortunate mistake of being in the wrong
movie with the wrong people.
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