A Good Day to Die Hard,’ With Bruce Willis
20th Century Fox
Bruce Willis and Jai Courtney in "A Good Day to Die Hard."
“It’s not 1986 anymore,” a sneering Russian villain (one of several in “A Good Day to Die Hard”) says to John McClane. “Reagan is dead.” McClane is in no position to argue at just
that moment, though you can be sure he will have the last word. (It’s
not “Yippee ki-yay,” which is reserved for a different Russian villain
and which has somehow joined “Make my day” and “I’ll be back” in the lexicon of deathless action-movie catchphrases.) But the bad guy’s remark pays oblique homage to the longevity of the “Die Hard” franchise, which made a movie star of Bruce Willis in 1988, and also perhaps to its patriarchal, populist politics.
Back then McClane was an avatar of embattled
American masculinity, a regular working stiff whose essential good
humor was challenged by Japanese corporations, bureaucratic red tape,
feminism and a nasty Euro-nihilist with a fancy suit and a silky accent.
That those days are gone is signaled by the portrait of Barack Obama on
the wall of the shooting range where we first encounter McClane in this
movie, the fifth in the series.
McClane himself has evolved from angry
Everyman to weary, worried dad. He travels to Moscow to help his son,
Jack (Jai Courtney), who at first looks like a bad seed but turns out to
be a chip off the old block. Some dads take their boys fishing or to
the ballgame or to a movie like this one, but the McClanes prefer a more
primal form of bonding — killing miscreants, though Pop McClane uses a
more evocative word.
And there is never a shortage. The cold war
may be a fading memory, and C.I.A. superspies (like the younger McClane)
may have displaced big-city cops (like his dad) in the pop-culture
pantheon. But this off-the-shelf blend of car chases, fireballs and the
rat-a-tat, thunk-a-thunk of automatic weapons fire is not likely to go
out of style. Style, sad to say, is precisely what is missing from “A
Good Day to Die Hard,” the latest entry in the flourishing geezer-action
genre. Directed by John Moore (“Max Payne,” “Behind Enemy Lines”),
it consists of a handful of extended set pieces — each more elaborate
and therefore somehow less exciting than the last — linked by a
simple-minded plot and a handful of half-clever lines, most of them
muttered by Mr. Willis.
It’s hard to hear the words over the noise
of weapons, vehicles and Marco Beltrami’s bludgeoning score, but I’m
pretty sure that McClane refers to a beautiful Russian woman named Irina
(Yulia Snigir) as “Solzhenitsyn,”
though he might be referring to her father, Komarov (Sebastian Koch),
who looks a bit more literary. The relationship between those two —
Komarov is a former mogul at odds with the Russian government; Irina is
an avid consumer of lipstick — might have made an interesting parallel
to the McClane father-son drama, but interesting is the last thing this
movie wants to be.
Though it will most likely scare up some
domestic business in the pre-Oscar lull (happy Valentine’s Day!), “A
Good Day to Die Hard” is squarely aimed at the overseas marketplace.
About a third of the dialogue is already subtitled, and the rest would
take a competent translator about 15 minutes to render.
The movie’s real idiom is the Esperanto of
violence — sex is a more culturally sensitive issue, so there’s none of
that — and sweaty machismo. Mr. Willis himself is something of a
universal language, or at least a popular international brand. There’s a
newish Rolling Stones song playing over the end credits.
This is what the new global cinema looks
like. The special effects sequences are put together with some
ingenuity, though the last one (spoiler alert: Mr. Willis drives a truck
off the back of a helicopter in Chernobyl) shows signs of sloppy
digital overkill. But everything that made the first “Die Hard”
memorable — the nuances of character, the political subtext, the cowboy
wit — has been dumbed down or scrubbed away entirely. I’m not saying I
wish it was the ’80s again — or maybe I am. If that makes me a grumpy
old man, it’s John McClane’s fault.
“A Good Day to Die Hard” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Yippee ki-yay, my friends.
A Good Day to Die Hard
Opens on Thursday nationwide.
Directed by John Moore; written by Skip
Woods and Jason Keller; director of photography, Jonathan Sela; edited
by Dan Zimmerman; music by Marco Beltrami; production design by Daniel
T. Dorrance; costumes by Bojana Nikitovic; produced by Alex Young and
Wyck Godfrey; released by 20th Century Fox. Running time: 1 hour 37
minutes.
WITH: Bruce Willis (John McClane), Jai
Courtney (Jack McClane), Sebastian Koch (Komarov), Rasha Bukvic (Alik),
Cole Hauser (Collins) and Yulia Snigir (Irina).
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