Neil Fox’s film reviews: A Good Day To Die Hard

Bruce Willis is back with a vengeance

Published on 14/02/2013 08:29

A Good Day To Die Hard

He’s back, and he’s old, and slow, and his wisecracks don’t crack so wise. Another needless instalment in a franchise that has already had a second coming.

The original Die Hard is the greatest action movie of all time. Period. Die Hard 2 is a bad movie. The second coming for the franchise came in the form of the rollicking Die Hard With A Vengeance which redeemed the whole shebang with wit, a great story and brilliant pieces.

Since then it has taken a serious nosedive into schlocky, derivative territory that no one comes out of favourably, and that includes the viewer.

This instalment is utterly preposterous, so much so that on the right night, with the right kind of audience and lubrication, it could be fun.

McClane is in Russia to try and help his son, in danger of going off the rails. Trouble is, he’s not off the rails, he’s as on the rails as they come, being a CIA operative and all, resulting in father and son attempting to foil a nuclear arms heist and save the world. Ludicrous.

The character of John McClane was fascinating as he grumped his way through situations that felt almost real or plausibly challenging.

Here, there’s no care for the characters or any interest in evolving the entertainment and empathy so clear in earlier films.

Beautiful Creatures

Another teen literary hit brought to the big screen to squeeze the young person’s wallet.

Searching for the next Potter, Twilight or Hunger Games has seen Warner put their chips on this romance about a young boy and girl who fall for each other, only for dark family secrets to threaten their love and their lives. Decent cast, but a bit too sprawling.

Like the Hunger Games but nowhere near as successfully, it tries too hard to attract fans of all characters in the book, rather than maintaining a strong, cinematic narrative. The film meanders and is never as effective as it could be as a result.

News

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Neil Fox’s film reviews: A Good Day To Die Hard

Top stories

News