There seems to be some confusion on the part of everyone involved in making this movie as to how a Die Hard film works. John McClane gets dragged into a situation IN AMERICA that results in him causing massive amounts of chaos and death and progressively getting torn to shreds as the film evolves. In the midst of all of this, he’s usually dealing with a crisis in his family, there are things said that are funny and there is an actual plot (linear though it may be). Die Hard 5 (which is easier to type than its real title) is only recognizable as a Die Hard film because it’s in the title and people are addressing Bruce Willis as John McClane.
A lot of people didn’t like Die Hard 4 (which also has an unnecessarily long title), but I thought it was a ton of fun and a good transition to an older John. That movie focused mainly on John re-establishing ties with his daughter Lucy (Winstead). In theory, the plot here is he’s going to re-establish ties with his son Jack (Courtney). Jack’s gone off the grid, but they think he might be in Moscow, so off John goes and within ten minutes of leaving the airport, he’s managed to find his son, blow his son’s CIA op, and engage in a demolition derby that wrecks a sizable portion of the city. This is the most plausible part of the plot. Salvaging Jack’s op leads them to a culmination in Chernobyl. Yes, Chernobyl, where even though the bad guys manage to figure out that radiation suits are a good idea, Jack and John march in dressed in automatic weaponry. I can only imagine that the plot of Die Hard 6: Die Hardest (seriously) which is scheduled for 2015 will involve them both dying from horrifying radiation-induced cancer. There’s a decent chance that would have been more entertaining than this.
There is no character development, no connective tissue between action scenes and really the only things I can say positively about the film is that it’s short and rated R, which is what a Die Hard film should be rated. John McClane is not Jason Bourne. I hope whatever they come up with for what they are claiming will be the last film, will give the character a better send-off then this loud, pointless dud.
2.25/10
Killing Time 