A Good Day to Die Hard

Bruce Willis is back for the fifth time as durable New York Detective John McClane, traveling to Moscow to help his estranged son, Jack (Jai Courtney), who has been charged with the murder of a Russian mobster. To his amazement, John discovers that Jack is actually a CIA agent…“the 007 of Plainfield, New Jersey.” Jack is working undercover, trying to protect government whistleblower Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch), a dissident nuclear scientist with an attractive daughter named Irina (Yuliya Snigir). Father and son team up to get Komarov and Irina to safety, thwart ambitious Defense Minister Chagarin (Sergei Kolesnikov), and derail a sinister scheme to commit a potentially disastrous crime in the ill-fated city of Chernobyl, where both Komarov and Chagarin worked at the time of the catastrophic reactor meltdown. Working from a dreadful, dumbed-down script by Skip Woods, director John Moore's film lacks any semblance of coherence, although it does feature a couple of high-octane set pieces, including a massive car chase filmed on Moscow's Garden Ring and a sequence on the Miss Belarus, a huge, 25-ton helicopter. Easily the weakest entry in the Die Hard franchise, a good day this isn't. Not recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include deleted scenes (15 min.) and trailers. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release is an audio commentary by director John Moore and first assistant director Mark Cotone, a “Making it Hard to Die” behind-the-scenes documentary (61 min.), the production featurettes “Anatomy of a Car Chase” (26 min.), “Pre-Vis” (12 min.), “Two of a Kind” (8 min.), “Back in Action” (7 min.) “The New Face of Evil” (7 min.), and “VFX Sequences” (6 min.), a “Maximum McClane” montage, storyboards, a concept gallery, and bonus DVD, digital, and UltraViolet copies of the film. Bottom line: a fine Blu-ray extras package for a disappointing franchise entry.] (S. Granger)