Review 1:
"A Good Day to Die Hard," otherwise known as Die Hard 5, is your average philistine's thriller. It is wilfully stupid and seems to believe everything is better with explosions. The plot has generic twists and is fundamentally unbelievable. The action sequences for which most will watch the film are often the result of that bane upon film-making: CGI. The morals are unambiguous, the characters are basic, and the purposeful commentary on society is non-existent. "A Good Day To Die Hard" is a simple film, for simple people. *haughty laugh*
Let us begin with the characters. The main character of John McClane, played by Bruce Willis, accidentally ruins his son's crucial CIA mission. Here is the basic requirement for the Aristotelian tragic hero: "a hero who does not know, and so acts, creating the plot's problem." However, despite an hour and a half of film, this basic concept of tragedy is never expanded. It would be easy to do so, yet the film prefers to focus on more vulgar things, such as the endless action. It would also be easy to convert the film into an epic of redemption, as a result of McClane's mistake, but this theme is also kept threadbare. It is almost as if the film doesn't want to be a grand and intelligent tragedy!
There are occasional brilliances in cinematography and setting. For example, the film opens with a rough shaven, grizzled and brooding John McClane in a dark police shooting range. After being informed of his son's arrest, Willis makes McClane look genuinely disappointed... in both his parenting and his son. The dark longing eyes and resigned body language speaks volumes when compared to that of the young Cop calling him "Grandpa" in jest. However, does the film examine how ageing parents deal with their disappointing offspring? No, it moves onto a horribly incongruent scene in which McClane cheerfully waves goodbye to his daughter.
The film's musical score also has infrequent moments of splendour. Many would call it melodramatic and histrionic, but it only augments the overall absurdity of this needlessly expensive popcorn flick. It is somewhat fitting that the music is so theatrical in a film so stupendously silly. It is much better to the ears than the monosyllabic dialogue, where grunts and crass one-liners are the closest to intelligent discourse you will hear. One cannot help but get the impression that the dialogue is secondary to the mindless action!
The setting of Russia also seems painfully aesthetic and superficial. There is no daring discussion of the scars communism has left, or the corruption in modern Russia. These are just useful backdrops to the generic plot and another gimmick through which the film can sell itself. In fact, halfway through, the film appears to change its mind, and the setting moves to Ukraine. This film could have been set anywhere, given its simplicity in plot and themes, so the laboured use of Russia seems awkward to the senses.
"A Good Day to Die Hard" is a lazy, simple film. The central themes, if you can call them that, are not developed to any extent more than the plot requires. "A Good Day to Die Hard" has no artistic merit or intellectual rigour, just mindless action. No day is a good day to see this film.
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Review 2:
Woooooo! Explosions! Guns! Car Chases! More Explosions! "A Good Day to Die Hard" has it all!
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Depending on the attitude and expectations you go in with, Die Hard 5 is either an extreme disappointment or a thrilling success. Don't judge it on how clever or emotional it is, because that isn't its purpose. The point of it was to make money and have mindless action, so judging it on artistic sentiment is like judging a fish for it's ability to climb a tree: pointless.
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