A Good Day to Die Hard (aka Die Hard 5)

Yesterday was valentine’s day and because of that (and a couple of other things) I was in the mood for a good action flick.  I wanted to see Bruce Willis blow shit up.  I needed the quips and a really fantastic bad guy (or bad girl).  What I needed was Die Hard original sauce.  Die Hard 5 is definitely not Die Hard original sauce.  But it was Bruce Willis blowing shit up so I guess I got what I wanted.  Sort of.

It was not good.  There were obscene amounts of death and destruction.  The number of totaled cars alone was staggering.  The dialogue was lame and the quips were incredibly weak.  And the story?  Well, the story is this: blah, blah, blah, Russian baddies; blah, blah, blah Chernobyl; blah, blah, blah uranium; blah, blah, blah reconnecting with estranged son.  BLAH.

Don’t even get me started on the camera work.  Oy.  There was tons of moving camera, even when there was no particular action in the scene.  Then there was the speedy editing that made no sense.  Oh and the zooming.  OH. THE. ZOOMING!  There was one scene, early on, where the camera zoomed in and out on each person in a room and there were like 15 people in the room.  Actually there might have only been 5 but the camera kept moving, and zooming, and moving again so at some point I got totally lost.

And the cast?  Well Bruce seemed not totally thrilled to be there.  Thankfully there are movies like Moonrise Kingdom to remind me that he’s a great actor.  He delivered lines and shot a lot of people so I’m sure he was in the movie but he still seemed kind of absent.  Then there were some nondescript Russian baddies and that was a problem.  I want my baddie to be recognizable.  Where were the Alan Rickmans and the Jeremy Ironses (Irons'?) ?

So what did I like?  Well I liked having Russians as the bad guys again.  And I really liked the guy playing John McClane’s son, Jack.  Aussie actor, Jai Courtney, had that honor and I REALLY enjoyed his “work.”  Ok, his “work” consisted of tight tees, big biceps, and shooting at people but he did it well.  

 And honestly...it was still better than Conan.