Thursday, March 2, 2017

A Good Day To Die Hard

This 5th installment in the Die Hard film franchise is basically a live-action cartoon. Physics barely plays a role here in the chase scenes, and the shoot-out scenes, and the scenes in the final act. But if you turn your brain off, and treat it like an amusement park ride, it hits a few Die Hard spots, at least for me.

They turned John McClane into a terminator Dad of sorts, there's no registering of fear or trepidation by John, or of consequence for wanton destruction in the pursuit of his son in Russia in the first act. It's crazy like that. John suffers blows injuries that should have sidelined him with broken hips and torn ACLs from the action, but I guess he's been toughened up by the first four films. The strained character interplay between son and father slowed down the film, the script hamstrung the momentum with too much vagueness. Maybe a different director could have mined the interpersonal scenes better, but there wasn't much on the page, I suspect.

I'd like to have seen more of the Russian gal, they did cheat us out of stuff already shown in the trailer. Weird.

I give it 2 stars or a grade of C, just for embracing the action zeitgest of today without any recriminations.

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