The camera tilts
and zooms at rapid speed as tyres skid, cars crash, helicopters explode and
glass shatters in excess. Tight close ups are cut together with shaky action
shots in a disorienting and perplexing catastrophe. Ah shaky cam, my arch nemesis we meet again. Whoa, how many times did
that truck flip?
Messy action is the hallmark of A Good Day to Die Hard,
unquestionably the worst instalment in the Die Hard franchise. The cinematography is so unabashingly awful it
leaves us wondering whether Michael Bay himself was behind the camera. Alas,
John Moore is the hack at the helm of this flick.
This time round John McClane (Bruce Willis) takes us
to Russia to track down his son Jack (Jai Courtney) who has been charged for a
serious crime. It turns out that Jack is an undercover CIA agent involved in a vague undercover operation described by Willis’ character as ‘spy
stuff’. The action takes them to Chernobyl, Ukraine to locate some sort of file that contains secret information. More importantly, father and son take stunts to the highest level of improbability and bond over killing a bunch of Russian terrorists.
It’s safe to say A Good Day to Die Hard doesn’t care about
plot. Bland and one-dimensional characters are forced to follow a paper-thin
narrative that is severely underdeveloped. We are directed from one set piece
into another only to see them destroyed by a shower of pelting bullets and
explosions. In the midst of a ten-minute car chase one of the characters
says, ‘I’ve had enough of this shit’. He’s not the only one.
In the original, John McClane was your everyday man, a
regular Joe with a foul mouth and a wisecracking attitude. Once a reluctant
hero, now his character is little more than a tired macho cliché. In spite of
the title, A Good Day to Die Hard plays more as an average action adventure than a
proper Die Hard movie.
But at least the trailer was good...
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