Monday, November 23, 2015

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)


Terrorist John "Die Hard" McClane travels to Russia, where he commits a carjacking, kills dozens of civilians during an ill-advised car chase through crowded city streets, helps an accused criminal elude the authorities, and causes untold property damage. Whenever someone questions his behavior he responds with his new catchphrase ("I'm on vacation!"), shoots them, and then sodomizes their corpse. We know Die Hard's really a good guy though, because he is willing to share the occasional "moment" with select Russians -- as long as they speak English -- and he speechifies his regrets about being a dick in the past, although this doesn't effect any of his current decisions to be a dick. Nevertheless, a few folks do try to kill Die Hard in return by shooting at him with machine guns and, at one point, a military-grade helicopter. He always manages to duck though.

A scene from one of the Die Hard movies, probably.
As an impromptu justification for murdering so many people and destroying so much shit, Die Hard decides to help the CIA -- played by his son -- smuggle a political prisoner out of the county. Having lived through seven or eight previous Die Hard movies however, Die Hard Sr. knows that there's going to be a big twist, and sure enough, the bad guy they're smuggling out of the country turns out to be a bad guy. He's confident Die Hard won't arrest him though, because "You're out of your jurisdiction, Detective McClane." He's right, of course, so Die Hard Jr. tosses him off a building and into some whirling helicopter blades instead, in a comedic callback to Die Hard 1. Because how funny is it that Die Hard 1 exists? (I assume that's the joke, since merely reminding people that a thing exists counts as jokes now.) In retaliation, the pretty girl bad guy crashes the helicopter into the building where Die Hard and his son are standing, but they both escape by jumping out a window and falling multiple stories through several harmless planes of glass. The helicopter falls the same distance but explodes (three times), killing everyone on board. Then, since they're currently at the site of the Chernobyl disaster and there is literally nothing else in the vicinity to destroy, the movie ends.

A lot of people hated this entry in the series, but fortunately Hollywood doesn't care what people think and besides, what did they expect, a bunch of hugging? Two-and-a-half stars.
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