Movie Review: A Good Day To Die Hard

3.5 stars out of 5

I’ll keep seeing Die Hard movies as long as they keep making them. They’ll wheel out Bruce Willis, it’ll be “Yippie-ki— wait, what was I talking about?” and I’ll be sitting there in the virtuo-theater munching eCorn. But if they expect me to remember anything from film to film, they really need to make them a little more frequently.

John McClane’s son, Jack, features prominently in this one. Had we seen him in the other movies? Did we know he was missing? Who knows, the last installment was in 2007. I don’t even remember what I had for lunch yesterday. The actor has that not-quite-handsome-enough, maybe-they-cast-him-years-ago-and-are-just-sticking-with-it sort of look.

The daughter, she was in that last one, right? I have vague recollections of a college campus maybe, McClane in a car at night. I don’t know.

Thank goodness for IMDB. We haven’t seen “John Jr.” since the original Die Hard in 1988 (different actor). And young Lucy McClane was in Live Free or Die Hard (same actress in 2007, different actress in 1988). Now where the hell is Bonnie Bedelia?

I was worried that this was going to be yet another “Hey you’re too old. No I’m not!” action movie. Sure enough, Willis is teasingly called Grampa seconds into his first scene. But I’ll hand it to him, Willis still gives good action. And shaving his head years ago was a smart move; he doesn’t look significantly older.

Quality-wise, I was somewhat hopeful. I didn’t expect it to match the first three installments. But I do remember enjoying the 2007 movie. A plane ran into an overpass or something? And there was Justin “Warren Cheswick/I’m a Mac” Long. I feel that one was a little more lighthearted? This one starts dark, grim. I wondered if they were aping the more serious recent Bond flicks. Indeed, the music seems to borrow pretty blatantly from Monty Norman and John Barry. And it was feeling a bit too plot-heavy: This Russian guy testifying against this other Russian guy, and the CIA is rooting for… one of them. And there’s a shooting, but wait, was that the first guy….

It all clears up enough, and hey, it’s John McClane in Russia! (And I think they actually filmed in Russia, and mostly in Hungary.) And he’s battling side-by-side with his son. And there is cool action, and double-crosses. Sure, about three too many times, Willis yells, “I’m on vacation!” But we do get our requisite “yippie-ki-ay” and the father-son-reconcilliation isn’t too painful to sit through. I thought the nicest touch was basing much of the plot and setting around Chernobyl. Many of us Die Hard fans are of a certain age, and I like to think it was a tip of the cap to us.

Now if we can just get a sequel to Blind Date.