Compare Your Life To Mine, Then Weep

A Good Day To Die Hard (2013) by John Moore

It had been quite a fucking while there, no?

By all accounts, it is unfair of me to review this movie because I only saw about an hour of it. I couldn't stand to see the rest, and this is only one of two films I've ever walked out on, and the first during which I'd actually fallen asleep. From its loud, obnoxious, confusing, insipid and uninspired action, to its massive plot holes and droll, unhappy characters, I couldn't stand this film and was happy when my date turned to me, eyes sad and depressed, and sad, "Can we please leave? This film is depressing".  And that is a massive, MASSIVE shame, because, despite all the negative reviews I'd read regarding this film, I still wanted to at least enjoy it on the same level as I had the previous entry, 2007's ridiculous Live Free Or Die Hard, which, while a "Die Hard" film in name only, remains my "start of summer" fun movie. I can honestly enjoy it for what it is, despite the fact that it is a bad, idiotic film. This latest entry though? It's just...sad. It exists and simply remains there, loud and obnoxious and telling us that this is what "Die Hard" is about and, God damn it all, it is anything but.
The plot, so far as there was one, involves a character who happens to be named John McClane, played by Bruce Willis, who played a more interesting character of the same name from 1988 through 1995, and his trip to Russia to rescue his son, Jack (played with a wasted determination by Jai Courtney) who is implicated in the attempted assassination of a Russian politician (played by Sebastian Koch? I honestly don't know. There's only so much movie one can pay attention to in between naps). There are apparently double- and triple-crosses, and victims are really villains, and ultimately all paths lead to Chernobyl. For some reason.
There is such lifeless banality to John McClane this time around that the entire film is a lifeless, joyless affair that, unlike Live Free..., is so un-fun it ruined the entire film and for me made me even question the notion of "fun" as a concept. Plot holes trip over themselves in a vain attempt to escape the confines of celluloid, such that what I am about to write in the exact next sentence is something that actually happened: so John McClane finds out his son is arrested in Russia, and his cop friend hacks some Russian files so John can study them; McClane, on a plane headed to Moscow, studies the Russian ploice files on his son. Close-ups indicate that, yes, they are indeed in Russian. The exact next scene finds McClane in the back of a Russian taxi, using am English-to-Russian dictionary to direct the cab to the courthouse. In the only instance where John McClane resembles anything like a human being, McClane flubs his translation. Here's the point: on the plane, McClane's reading the Russian file on his son like it ain't no thang, but in the cab he can't even say that he wants to go to the courthouse. Can the motherfucker speak Russian, or can't he? Please, be consistent with me movie. Be honest. If Live Free... can make me believe that McClane can fly a helicopter despite the fact that flying is one of his mortal fears, I will accept that the man can at least speak Russian...if you can at least meet me halfway. 
Immediately following this scene is a shootout in the courthouse, followed by one of the most confusing, overdrawn chase sequences since the entirety of Quantum Of Solace. McClane, having literally randomly run into his son as Jack is trying to escape with an informant he is to protect, leaps into a flatbed truck and, knowing nothing about any of the proceedings or why his son is being chased by who, rams his vehicle into oncoming traffic, eventually slamming the truck head-on into parked cars, where it flips over, completely destroyed.
John McClane climbs out and walks off like absolutely nothing happened, gets back into another car, and continues as if nothing out of the ordinary is going on. 
It is around this scene that I started to pass out. And that's the biggest shame of it all; in the middle of a "Die Hard" movie, with elaborate set pieces, and which is shorter in length than any of the other four films, I was bored out of my mind.
As I've stated before, I can enjoy a big dumb movie so long as it's consistent with it's gaps in logic and it's leaps in believability, and so long as it is earnest and fun. This is a dark (not tonally, just in terms of lighting), empty, soulless, sad affair, a film made simply to keep the rights to a character and name that rightly had no place being the fuck in the middle of Russia (or Chernobyl, for that fact...a location the characters actually go without ANY RADIOACTIVE PROTECTION WHATSOEVER).
Gone are the days of slow character development and cleverness, where the pacing pushes the story in such a palpable, concrete way it is almost a character of its own (for example, the slow build up in the first Die Hard film, establishing McClane's fear of heights, lack of shoes, indecision when it comes to saving Takagi...this is all slow build up, leading to an establishment of character. We get to know these people, and take the time to know not only their strengths, but their fears and weaknesses as well. By the end of the first film (hell, by the middle of the second act of the first film), McClane is beaten, bloodied beyond compare, walking on sliced up feet, exhausted, and almost defeated entirely. Here, in this film, there's an unstoppable thing called "John McClane", who seems to come alive only when he's killing bad guys and firing guns and surviving insane car crashes and making limp puns over the deafening sound of gunfire with too much bass. Here there is a film who's mid-act stunt involves jumping out of a window to avoid a helicopter gunfire, whose climax is set in MOTHERFUCKING CHERNOBYL, and whose main character comes away with less physical bodily damage than in his last film, in which he surfed an F18 jet before shooting a bullet through his already-shot shoulder. Here is a John McClane who has evolved, fully, into the very action caricature that he was the absolute antithesis of in 1988.
And therein lies the irony. At least Sylvester Stallone had the good sense to ground the last Rambo film with some sense of realism (make Rambo part of a team; address his age, address the previous films while developing off of them; have some Goddamn PACING, sure, 2008's Rambo was essentially a two-act film, but it didn't try to shove in some familial issues or sappy romance or confusing action). For a Die Hard film, this movie has more in common with XXX or Abduction or any other cheap action flick.
The cinematography is beyond confusing, the script (by The A-Team's Skip Woods) has such lapses in logic and coherence as well as a complete disregard for everything that made the previous entries fun that it's difficult to tell if the film is even trying to be serious (the entire climax takes place in Chrenobyl...where there was a giant fucking radioactive meltdown? And John and Jack run around with absolutely no protection whatsoever? And the audience is reminded at least 3 times throughout the film about what the fuck Chernobyl is, because apparently a major global event from the past 30 years is inconsequential?)
The Die Hard series is done, it's gone. With the last film it lost its sense of realism and depth, and with this film it lost its sense of fun. The quips are gone, none of the characters are real people (or even the exaggerated, broad-strokes "character types" that most modern action films tend to exhibit). Perhaps this is the modern state of action films now. Perhaps this is what we demand of our heroes: unstoppable, inconsequential, all-knowing, indestructible, and ultimately boring. 
So perhaps the Die Hard series is dead.
It had its run, it's finished.
Let's just leave it be and move on, shall we?