I remember being in the theatre for Resident Evil: Retribution last year, hoping for a fun-filled time but realizing quite early in the movie that this is likely to be the last movie of the Resident Evil series I'll be watching. I had that exact same feeling today, quite early on while watching A Good Day to Die Hard. That feeling stayed with me right till the end. This becomes more hard to take when you job your memory back and think of the younger John McClane, the one who made the Die Hard series a classic. This franchise is to Bruce Willis what Terminator is to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rambo is to Sylvester Stallone. The one that began it all, Die Hard, came in 1988, long long time back, 25 years back in fact. And it brought to the world Bruce Willis and his avatar of John McClane. Another macho star in what was turning out to be a golden era for action heroes. But the distinguishing part about McClane was his vulnerability, the fact he bled more, and he had a worrying look on his face, all of which made him look more of a human hero rather than a super hero. Two years later they came up with the sequel. Five years after that they brought in the third movie of the franchise. They should have stopped there.
After a hiatus of 12 years, Live Free or Die Hard released in 2007. It was no more a classic, but it wasn't surprisingly bad. Maybe the fact that it brought in enough money to the studio made it impossible to let it go. And so they just had to do it, had to make one more till the money well ran dry. So they released what seems like a regular B-grade action flick, only under the guise of a Die Hard movie. A Good Day to Die Hard feels wrong from the beginning. It is too loud to start with, and that is not a bad thing for an action movie, only in this case it just seems like noise, for there is missing a sound purpose to it all. There is some 15-minute car/truck chase scene right early on across the streets of Moscow which seems way too long, when you know beforehand that the good guys are not going to be taken captive so early on. Then soon enough you have a long gun blazing scene in the ballroom of a hotel and our heroes survive the day again. And then you have a long and elaborate gun fight plus helicopter plunging battle in a derelict of a place to wrap up the movie. That is more or less what the movie is about. In between all that you have a hero making amends with a son, some Russian politics, and a lame history behind a nuclear accident.
It is still Bruce Willis though. The guy who is been doing it for 25 years. And you somehow like him for that. He has the punch lines and tries to get the McClane spirit running but the screenwriters have taken most of it away from him. His 'I'm on a vacation' line does get annoying though. The previous Die Hard movie tried to show McClane's relationship with his daughter and this one shows his efforts to work things out with his estranged son. But while the chemistry between father and daughter in Live Free or Die Hard made the movie worthwhile, sadly there is hardly anything running here between Jai Courtney and Willis to give you the goosebumps. The few dad-son moments come in bits and pieces and seem forced, and then the characters also tend to forget them as soon as you do. There are none of the great villains of the Die Hard series, no Alan Rickman or Jeremy Irons, and so you care not how the bad guy is going to die. To end it all, it is just an action flick that you watch and forget, unworthy of the Die Hard brand.
The first two months of this year have seen a slew of action movies, most of which are from the so-called Expendables team. When you look at how the others have fared, Bruce Willis' flick has still earned a respectable figure. For the first weekend in US, Arnie's The Last Stand collected only $6 million, Sly's Bullet to the Head was more woeful with $4.5 million and Statham's Parker managed with barely $7 million. Compared to that, A Good Day to Die Hard grossed $25 million (though with a bigger production budget) and still has a decent fan-following in the foreign markets. So Die Hard series may not die after all, and if a sixth one ever comes out, I hope the makers make it with some heart after all... and not just lead!
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