A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD

Twentieth Century Fox

Rated R

Running time: 97 minutes



Click below to watch the A Good Day to Die Hard trailer.



In Twentieth Century Fox's A Good Day to Die Hard, NYPD cop Bruce Willis leaves his home in American and travels to Russia to retrieve his wayward son Jai Courtney from a Moscow prison - and gets involved with Russian terrorist intrigue and the CIA.

In Moscow, high-ranking but corrupt Russian official Sergei Kolesnikov plans on incriminating political prisoner Sebastian Koch without a fair trail when Koch refuses to hand over a secret file believed to have evidence against Kolesnikov. Meanwhile, Courtney - who was arrested for an assasination - agrees to testify against Koch for a shorter sentence. Willis, arriving in Russia for his son arrives at the courthouse - just as Kolesnikov's men attempts their own explosive justice against Koch. Courtney and Koch escape into the streets of Moscow - with Willis and Kolesnikov's men, who are led by Radivoje Bukvic, now after them.

In this fifth installment of the Die Hard movies, this is perhaps the most dramatic Die Hard movie that I have seen, as well as the most dysfunctional family oriented movie in the series. Don't get me wrong - there is still a lot of action in the movie, especially with the car chase and the helicopters. It is a shame that Willis's wife Bonnie Bedelia is not in the movie. I would hope that in the next Die Hard film that Bedelia will be in the movie so that they can have the entire Willis family of Courtney, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Bedelia in a Die Hard film before Willis retires the character. Willis has expressed a desire to do a sixth installment in the franchise and it would be great to see the entire family. My favorite line of dialog in this movie was "the things we do for our kids."

The dysfunctional family dynamics between Willis and Courtney in partnership together, as well as with Koch and his daughter Yuliya Snigir working together were quite interesting - especially when all these characters all interacted with each other. That made these characters much more interesting than bad guy Kolesnikov. Even Kolesnikov's henchman Bukvic was more interesting than Kolesnikov. What happens to Kolesnikov was something out of The Godfather.

There are subtitles when the characters speak Russian, which added to the James Bond-like worldliness feel to the movie. It is interesting to see the evolution of the Die Hard series, from destruction in a claustrophobic building - and going beyond to a world wide scenario with MAD implications. Despite the americanization of taxi cab driver Pasha D. Lychnikoff, Russian security was pretty professional and the use of the military helicopter was intense. It is too bad that you did not see any official Russian response to the situations in the movie, you just saw the terrorist response.

I liked the scenes with the helicopter, the Mi-24 HIND. They actually shot the movie with the HIND firing live ammunition to get the most realistic action. This reminded me of Act of Valor and their live fire use of the Navy SEALs riverine warboats. While the car chase was a great car chase, especially with the Cougar HEV armored truck used by the terrorists, Willis did not care about what he was doing to other people with his cars that seemed very reckless and uncaring to me. What if I was in the cars that he was hitting?

This is the first Die Hard movie that was actually written as a Die Hard movie. The others were actually written as different movies and turned into a Die Hard movie. This is also the first Die Hard film released in the IMAX format.

Rated R for violence and language. Running time: 97 Minutes.

Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.

 Pancho's Movie Reviews