My sister was visiting from Iowa and we made plans in San Francisco for the afternoon, so what do we do to pass the time? Go see Bruce Willis blow some shit up of course!
A Good Day to Die Hard stars Bruce Willis in his 5th go-round as John McClane. Lets be honest, the plot in these movies doesn't really matter. What matters is how many things get blown up, and how often John McClane says "fuck". That was my biggest problem with Live Free or Die Hard, it was rated PG-13 and that took a lot of the edge off of the movie. Warning, the next paragraph contains what is regarded as the plot to this movie.
There is a plot in A Good Day to Die Hard, and it revolves around something that I love dearly, Russians. As a Russian, it makes me giggle when we are depicted as bad guys and hungry for world domination. I for one, have no interest in world domination because it seems like a lot of work, and I'm more of a hands-off type of leader. Anyway, the plot is about a Russian bad guy that's locked up in prison. His name is Komarov (which derives from komar, which means mosquito, so his name means, "he who is a mosquito"; that's not in the movie, but a bit of Russian trivia for you) and he's played by Sebastian Koch. He's put in jail by a rising star in Russian politics, Chagarin (played by an actual Russian, Sergey Kolesnikov). The Americans want a file that Komarov have and they orchestrate a rescue, while Chagarin tries to orchestrate a murder. Both go awry and the CIA operative Jack McClane (Jai Courtney) has to go on the run and help Komarov find his secret file that can put Chagarin away for past war crimes.
That whole previous paragraph is not important. What is important is that there's an awesome car chase sequence about 15-20 minutes in to the movie and it was one of the most impressive ones that I have ever seen. Is it better than Ronin or the original Italian Job? Probably not, but it is up there.
*EDIT: I'm not the only one take notice! Apparently A Good Day to Die Hard now holds the record for most cars destroyed in a film at 132! Wow!*
My sister said it best, there was about 10% dialogue and 90% explosions in this movie, which is probably why at the time I'm writing this, it has a whopping 16% on Rotten Tomatoes. The good news? 82% of audiences liked it. What does that mean? Well, it means that artistically, this movie is about as interesting as watching Jackass. However, as a way of keeping your attention and making you giddy from explosions, this thing is amazing. There's a "passing of the torch" moment as well, so I think we can expect to see Jai Courtney take over the franchise and we'll get little cameos from Bruce Willis in the next film: If I Die, Let it be Hard.
3.5/5 from me, because plot does somewhat matter in the grand scheme of things, but as a diet coke + popcorn movie, this thing is fantastic! Go see it, but not on a first date.
