John McClane travels to Russia to help out his seemingly wayward son, Jack, only to discover that Jack is a CIA operative working to prevent a nuclear-weapons heist, causing the father and son to team up against underworld forces.
The original is a classic, the sequels have been variable, getting by on goodwill. This fifth Die Hard film doesn’t even deserve the title.
I don't think it knows where it's going. I'm not even sure it cares.
Overall, this is a bad day that you’d rather forget.
Like its title, A Good Day to Die Hard feels like a cut-and-shut job. The contoured bonnet is an enjoyable romp, but it has the dented rear end of a clunky thriller.
Here, the bangs come quickly but with less ingenuity, the rule being that if one loiters in a building for longer than five minutes a barrage of gunfire will shatter the windows.
The end result is mindless, trigger-happy carnage with the kind of bombastic score that strains every sinew to try to convince the viewer that what they are watching is really, really exciting. It isn’t.
Pretty much on a par with Die Hard 4.0, the poorly-titled A Good Day To Die Hard is essentially four big set pieces and a lot of explosions. Unless McTiernan is up for directing the apparently-confirmed sixth instalment when he gets out of prison (or someone else who ‘knows’ action), this signals A Good Day For The Franchise To Die Hard.
A few reasonable action sequences are mired in family soap, making this A Good Day To Call It Quits.
Entertaining, but dumb.
The poorest in the series, just one long, loud, violent, at times stupefyingly silly chase around Moscow.
There’s no villain here that comes close to Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber from the first film, and the shoot-outs feel tired. Even more inexcusably, there are no decent one-liners for Willis, unless you count the self-aware “this one’s a stinker”. It’s A Good Day To Consider Retirement.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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