A Good Day to Die Hard

In “A Good Day to Die Hard”, Bruce Willis, 57, returns to the big screen in order to save McClane’s son, John “Jack” McClane (Jai Courtney), who has been imprisoned. The bulk of the movie takes place in Russia, which creates an interesting blend of subtitled and non-subtitled Russian throughout the film. There are several minutes worth of car chases and crashes, made interesting solely by McClane’s blasé comments and facial expressions, but the film can sometimes be difficult to follow.

Nevertheless, the plot, similar to the other movies in the franchise, is somewhat predictable. Foreshadowed moments are scattered throughout such as when Lucy, McClane’s daughter, says to him as he leaves for Russia, “Just try, try not to make a bigger mess of things,” serve as a clear indicator that he will, indeed, make quite a big mess of things. Soon enough, McClane ruins his son’s job, kills plenty of bad guys and nearly dies himself more than once (but what’s a few head gashes here and there when you’ve survived a building being blown up). Unlike the previous movies, however, McClane purposefully goes somewhere with the intention of ending trouble—in the past, he has always accidentally found it and has had his day ruined. Today, he had a “pretty good day,” all things considered.

 The actual plot is fairly convoluted and obviously just thrown together in order to create another action movie featuring the iconic John McClane. The film serves its purpose-although confusing the viewer in the process. The film features several shout-outs to its predecessors, such as a bad guy falling out of a window in slow motion, a helicopter blowing up and the evolution of McClane’s white shirt getting dirtier and dirtier over the course of the film.

The film does not fail to repeatedly emphasize it’s two main points: 1. killing bad guys and 2. McClane’s vacation. Jack says to him, “Killing bad guys, that’s your thing,” after which they do in fact kill many bad guys, despite McClane saying, “Nobody’s gonna die today.” Additionally, there was a point when McClane wasn’t even on screen yet still said, “It’s my vacation!” as a vehicle came hurtling towards him.


The “Die Hard” franchise followed “Indiana Jones”’ and created a movie where the lead was now an old father reluctantly showing his son the ropes. Unlike the latter, “A Good Day to Die Hard” was semi-successful and almost believable. While McClane seems to be practically unbreakable (are we watching the right movie?) in this fifth installment, as he falls out of building himself, jumps into and out of windows multiple times, almost drowns, flings out of a truck inside of a flying helicopter, is hit by two different cars, is in several car crashes and is constantly shot at yet never actually hit— Bruce Willis is still up for one last “Die Hard” movie, so perhaps we still have one more “Yippee-ki-yay” to go?