Escape to the Movies: A Good Day to Die Hard

Ashley Blalock

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Sep 25, 2011
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I get the strange feeling that part of Hollywood just hasn't received the memo that people expect more. Sure there was a time when you could just run out anything with a big name star and loads of explosions and it would be good enough. But people found out that even action films can be more than just dumb mindless fun. I'm often stuck thinking well this film might have been good back in the 80's but compared to the good stuff now it just looks horrible.
 

Yvressian

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Jul 19, 2008
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Wow, this movie is shockingly bad. The movie is full of plot holes and it's completely out of character with the original Die Hard. The direction is awful, the actors look like they weren't actually in the same room when they talk to each other (which is possible, but still not excuse for such poor performances), the cuts are jerky, inconsistent and sometimes out of sequence. The script is horrible, needlessly gimmicky and worst of all, completely uninteresting.
Oh, and the "I'm on vacation" line gets old after about the 23rd time he says it... AND HE WASN'T EVEN ON VACATION IN THE FIRST PLACE!



Btw. the most laughable plot hole, at least IMO is when they...

--SPOILERS AHEAD--

...steal a car from (most likely) the Chechen mafia and then decide to DRIVE to Chernobyl. The very next scene places them near the (usually completely closed down and under military surveillance) Chernobyl power plant That means they make a 13 hour road trip during which they have to cross the Russia-Ukraine border while still bruised and bloodied, and driving a stolen car with a trunk full of automatic rifles.
 

Proverbial Jon

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Nov 10, 2009
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Oh man, I'd plain forgotten about Mercury Rising; aka the best Bruce Willis film ever.
 

linforcer

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Sep 10, 2012
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Wait, chernobyl is in Russia now? *checks wikipedia* Okay, I'm not crazy. It's in Ukraine, which has not been the USSR for a long time, and definitely not Russia.
 

karamazovnew

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Apr 4, 2011
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Die Hard was cool because back in those days they knew how to make action movies like these. Not anymore. Really, you guys need to see "The Raid: Redemption" just to remember how awesome action movies CAN be. You can tell from the trailers that this movie is a just a flashy waste of time.

Which is a shame because Willis is still the best action hero actor of the old guard. Just look at Looper, those few moments with him fraking up everybody were pure bliss.
 

OverEZ

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Nov 12, 2011
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What Bob said about McClane always bugged the hell out of me too and is a question I've asked out loud before. How is this man not touted as a national treasure by now? He's saved how many cities and how many lives and he's still just a detective? The man should be able to make a paper-mache house out of all the accommodation he's accumulated throughout the years and he's still just walking the beat? How is there not a "John McClane Day" by now? How does he not have at least a advert for Glock guns? The biggest problem with the Die Hard series is that the world around McClane rarely acknowledges his existence even though anyone else in his place would have ceased to exist a long time ago.
 

mrseriousguy

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Sep 24, 2011
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I really been saying for a long the last Die Hard that they turned him into Chuck Norris ;invincible superman that can kick ass at anything. Willis is now doing it for the giggle he gets inside for knowing he's getting a big check just for showing up. It's not his fault it's the Studios trying to force nostalgia of the good old days of action films.

Bob has a point about Mclaine being promoted or at very least forced on to a task force of some sort. Actually I'd go see that how would John deal with being Leader of a group of rookies, vets and rogues like himself. THAT would be character growth when they die trying to live up to being "Good as John" then at the end he dies(Or nearly dies). Not in some impossible situation just something mundane and tragic and all to common for officers in the field.
 
Apr 8, 2010
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Ugh....just had the fortune of watching this pile of mindbogging non-creativity. And now....I'm depressed. Really. There is literally nothing outstanding in this movie - everything is just one giant mass of explosions, garbled cars and bad exchanges between Bruce Willies and that other guy. Not a single interesting character. The twist is dumb and the "Wahhh! You never cared about me, dad. So let's shoot some bad guys together to mend our broken family" is the very definition of an overused setpiece. It's annoying, its dumb, lacks any kind of self-reflection and the action is beyond uninspired.

Usually I wouldn't have really minded and just shoved it off as a bad movie, but its just so depressing to see a movie series whose first three entries were great turn into this money grabbing mess. But....that's what one gets when studios want to reuse old franchises I guess....meh....

Or in other words: I agree with Moviebob.

Why can't more movies I watch be like Cloud Atlas?
 

Shirokurou

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Mar 8, 2010
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As a professional Russian I find it my duty to point out the mistakes.

- The taxi driver knowing English and then letting John leave without paying.
While the traffic jams are too accurate. Most of Moscow's taxi drivers are actually immigrants from the East, so them speaking proper Russian is good. And they are known to command huge prices. Especially if from the airport.

-The main politician villain was aiming for... what again? Mayor of Moscow?
That would get him nowhere. You might've heard about Russia's Putin and how he is supposedly strict. Well he's backed up by a system. One renegade guy is nothing. I mean this isn't Val Verde. This! Is! Russia!

-Guns in the car trunk near the club.
Ok this looks all too stupid to an actual Russian. The thing is, Russia doesn't have gun licenses outside of hunting ones. Bodyguards and mafia might pack handguns, but they sure as hell don't have trunks full of them in cars. The funnier thing is that just recently a guy fired a traumatic gun into the sky on a wedding in Moscow and all the cops were on his tail like immediately and got the gun laws even tighter.

- And the biggest of them all... Driving to Chernobyl.
Ok, just take a map and look at where those two are. No seriously do it. They drove all of that in one night or so. And the Maybach may prove pretty useless on the Russian roads. Cause this isn't a German autobahn. This would be bumpy as hell. Also the countryside petrol would kill the maybach.
Also Chernobyl is in Ukraine, which many of you might not know (apparently you don't) is a different country. So Willis would have to cross a national border in a stolen car full of guns with no passport.
And even if he got through that he'd have to get into Chernobyl, which is kinda locked down due to radiation.
 

Ashcrexl

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May 27, 2009
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The next logical step: Bruce Willis punches ghosts in "Are You a God? Then Die Hard!"
 

Kinitawowi

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Nov 21, 2012
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Nice work on the delivery of that Long List, Bob.

Yeah. This was awful. "Dad struggles to connect with his kid" was done much better with Mary Elizabeth Winstead in 4.0 (fuck you all, I'm British), and the main reason it worked that time was because it was just one arc in a whole movie's worth of stuff. But by directly contrasting John'n'Jack's relationship with Komorov'n'Irina's (those are the right names, right?) they tried to make the disconnect between generations into something of a whole theme throughout the movie (Chernobyl is basically a generation ago now). And the problem is that the audience just does. Not. Care. Fathers and sons aren't going to see this movie together (despite the utterly pathetic 12 certificate; Die Hard 1 was an 18, grow a pair filmmakers); Die Hard movies now are for long-standing fans of the franchise. It's quite telling that one of the adverts in the cinema before the movie (when I saw it) was for McDonalds, featuring a teenage boy having nothing in common with his mother's new beau until Big Macs (captcha: cheese burger) come into the equation. Of course, it's even more telling that another advert was for a new DVD box set of all four Die Hard films.

But yeah. I'm kinda okay with McClane having not become an in-universe superhero yet; yeah, he's saved the nation a few times but he's blown up umpteen vehicles, even more buildings (and parts thereof) and at least one freeway in the process; at worst, they might have Dilbert Principled him out of the way to keep him out of trouble, and even that wouldn't have worked because... well, he's John McClane.

Also, Jack's a douche.
 

lostlevel

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Nov 6, 2008
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Crazy_Dude said:
Its sad to see Bruce Willis still play in great movies (Looper) and still go for stupid cash outs like this. Die Hard should have DIED HARD a long time ago.
I agree, I can't even remember the plot of most of them but they do amuse me, not really something I'd bother to go to see in the cinema though. This latest one looks like Michael Bay movie so I didn't plan to watch it anyway.

If you want some Bruce Willis I recommend "12 Monkeys" that's a good example.
 

Paradoxrifts

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Jan 17, 2010
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It is just me, or can we officially add old action movie actors to the list of things Movie Bob hates?
 

Lucane

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Mar 24, 2008
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6th And Silver said:
Uh, Bob?

...Since when is "Unbreakable" an action movie?
It wasn't about action movies it was about Movies you should watch 1st that have Bruce Willis in it before you should bother watching before thinking about going to "A Good Day to Die Hard" in chronological order outside of the other Die Hards I'd give an honorable mention to "Four Rooms" though if DH5 is as lack luster as he makes it out to be.
 

MarsProbe

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Dec 13, 2008
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What bugs me about the last two Die Hard films is where all we getting all this John McClane offspring from? In the previous film we get his daughter, from....somewhere and now we have his son. If we take it that the films took place the same year as they were released, they would have at least been around at the time of DHWAV.

In Die Hard 6, it will probably be revealed that John McClane has a twin because now, the only place left for them to go is to have two McClanes running around. That, and North Korea.
 

Tumedus

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Jul 13, 2010
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MarsProbe said:
What bugs me about the last two Die Hard films is where all we getting all this John McClane offspring from? In the previous film we get his daughter, from....somewhere and now we have his son. If we take it that the films took place the same year as they were released, they would have at least been around at the time of DHWAV.

In Die Hard 6, it will probably be revealed that John McClane has a twin because now, the only place left for them to go is to have two McClanes running around. That, and North Korea.
It was established in the very first movie that he had kids. And they were at least referenced in all of the sequels.
 

KEM10

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Oct 22, 2008
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Having watched the film I am agreeing with everything Movie Bob says.
EXCEPT 5 is better than 4. 4 felt longer cause I kept wanting to slap the Mac guy every time he opened his mouth and the fish out of water shtick got old fast.
 

Crazy Zaul

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Oct 5, 2010
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I saw a clip of Bruce on the 1 show. They were sucking up to him about how good its supposedly is and hes just like... "yeeeah" and his tone of voice sounds like 'this is a shitty cash in and I just don't care'.
 

Canadamus Prime

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Jun 17, 2009
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I didn't even know they'd made another Die Hard after With a Vengeance, which incidentally is the only one I've seen.