The sky was blue, the sun shone brightly, and I didn’t expect that that day is a good day to hardly die. Haha, what am I saying. The truth is, I barely picked anything to watch just after I stepped into a cinema. But, there it goes: I guessed it was a good day to watch “A Good Day to Die Hard”. Really, action movie was never gonna be my first choice, and mixed reviews for this 5th sequel of “Die Hard” franchise, which was nearly decreasing by quality recently, gave me a feeling that I was just gonna spend my money watching crap movies. But, still, I expect that at least, I got a so-called guilty pleasure watching “A Good Day to Die Hard”. Was it that bad?



The focus of “A Good Day to Die Hard” is actually not to Jack anymore, but to John. Or, half-heartedly, to the non-dramatic relationship of the son-and-dad. Skip Woods, the writer of this movie, avoids too much rambling in this movie. It takes no need to allocate certain amount of duration to talk much or explain much. There will only be heist all over the movie. “A Good Day to Die Hard” pulls itself from being anti-mainstream by releasing all you want and expect from an action-crime movie to real. Car crash, fight, shooting, and much more violence will drain your adrenaline, for at least telling viewers that this movie was big-budgeted. And, finally, the spionage-kinda story takes no support of your attention because, if you see it in detail, probably you’ll just lose your excitement in watching this movie. So, you won’t supposedly ask why it takes the whole load of national security guards to catch this little American son-and-dad badasses, or why it always seems stilted that every clue about nuclear weapon is always about Chernobyl. Beside, although there's a kind of twist in this movie, it went so plain that I didn't even shocked by it. It's more to be a flavor in this up-and-down plot, it's there just to make the story a little bit more complicated instead of just a story of heroes versus villains. The thing is, just take it all, enjoy your ride, and you’ll walk outside the theater with full satisfaction.

“A Good Day to Die Hard” is no longer Bruce Willis’ one-man performance. I like to call his character as a supporting role because, although John McClane is The Die Hard man, this movie won’t talk much about him. The more interesting point is on Jai Courtney, as Jack McClane, because he offers new and fresh character. He was rebellious, a bit stubborn smartass wannabe, and for characterizing this part, I think Courtney did a nice job. Well, I said that I haven’t seen Bruce Willis performance as John McClane in any of the previous “Die Hard” movies, but what I saw from him in this movie is that he was cool, a bit wise as a dad, somewhat ignorant, but secretly helpful. I mean, if he didn’t accidentally go to Russia, I guess Jack’s plan to achieve his goal would fail.

There are not much notable things I saw from “A Good Day to Die Hard”, except that it’s a very entertaining popcorn movie. No need to think much, no need to discuss plot holes whatsoever. “A Good Day to Die Hard” may receive bad reviews from many other viewers, but for me, it did an “enough” job. It's a nice one-shoot entertainment. Of course it is far from being special, because it’s more to be a pleasure for adrenaline-booster movie-buff. And finally, “A Good Day to Die Hard” is a good random pick I did in such a good day to go to the cinema.

---

---

---

A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD | COUNTRY USA YEAR 2013 RATING Rated R for violence and language RUNTIME 98 min GENRE Action, Crime, Thriller CAST Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Sebastian Koch, Yuliya Snigir WRITER Skip Woods (screenplay), Roderick Thorp (certain original character) DIRECTOR John Moore MORE INFO