Cinematic Releases: A Good Day To Die Hard

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Bruce Willis returns with this latest installment of the Die Hard franchise in full brute force. What his genre counterparts lacked these past couple months in two mediocre releases, he more than makes up for with a true return to form for the lost art of the 80's action juggernaut.

After Bullet to the Head and The Last Stand, I was questioning my motivation to see another middle aged man suffer through a series of unbelievable sequences in which he can survive gunfire, car crashes, and vast explosions. With A Good Day To Die Hard I was more than happy to see someone finally make a good sequel that had many qualities of the original film. The story is better rounded and the villains are much more developed than Olyphant's baddie in Live Free or Die Hard. Unbelievable and silly at times, this is one action film that absolutely entertained me.

A Good Day To Die Hard features one of the strongest villains since the second entry and is definitely closer in tone to the original two films. Where the last sequel tried too hard to keep up with modern technology and the whole cyber terrorism threat, this movie sets that all aside and gets back to straight up action with scenes that literally sent me back twenty years. Director John Moore obviously holds a higher standard in his action films and went all out in trying to recapture the heyday of great franchise movie making. At times it seems like he might be trying a bit too hard and he definitely goes overboard with the slow motion, but overall he does a bang up job returning this 24 year old series to its original form.

Being that I was 14 years old when the first Die Hard film was released, I always hold that movie in high regard. For me it's a modern classic that put a regular cop in harm's way, throwing every possible hurdle in his direction. And he unbelievably survived four movies of non-stop death defying acts that would have obviously killed him by now. But, that's the fun of the Die Hard series. John McClane is a stone cold bad ass that can take any abuse and smirk while doing so. A Good Day To Die Hard truly aspires to maintain a level of quality that has been lacking in action cinema of late.

See it.

-CG 4 out of 5