In this week’s Film Focus, Austin Lynch looks at the latest installment in the die hard franchise…
The name’s Willis…Bruce Willis.
EVERYONE can relax – as the world’s most indestructible police man is back to save the day.
New York police officer John McClane is back for more adventure in ‘A Good Day to Die Hard’, or Die Hard 5 to you and I, which was released last week.
In the past John McClane has fought thieves, terrorists, drug lords and cyber terrorists.
And he has been trapped in a skyscraper, blown up an airport and been forced to race through New York to stop a subway train from blowing up. Not to mention crawling through more ventilation shafts than any other man alive – including ventilator shaft engineers.
Actor Bruce Willis has been playing McClane for the last two decades or so, and in fairness to Willis he certainly doesn’t look like a man who is close to turning 60 years of age.
In the last outing, Die Hard 4.0, the film started with McClane keeping an eye on the dating habits of his daughter, which was just the latest ‘family’ link to the movie franchise.
The first two movies featured John McClane’s wife Holly with only the third film not having a member of McClane’s family involved in a speaking role.
In ‘A Good Day to Die Hard’ the family theme is continued with Jack McClane, John’s son, who seems to have got himself into some trouble in Russia with daddy despatched to help out his little boy.
As everyone knows by now trouble seems to follow John McClane around like a lonely dog looking for a friend and no sooner has the NYPD’s finest landed in Moscow than things, people and buildings start blowing up.
It turns out that little Jack (played by up and coming star Jai Courtney) is a highly trained CIA agent on the trail of a nuclear arms heist by the Russian mafia.
This is about as far as any plot goes with the rest of the time filled in by explosions, lots of gun battles with some very, very big guns and a girl riding a motorbike with a bikini on under her leathers.
The man at the helm of this movie is Dundalk born director John Moore and he does his best to make the latest ‘Die Hard’ look and feel as exciting and as action packed as the four previous films.
It certainly appears he has succeeded when it comes to the action stakes – cars and trucks fly through the air, helicopters and cars explode everywhere you look and men jump out of windows like lemmings of a cliff.
All this happened in the previous films yet there was enough else going on to keep you watching, and interested between all the madness.
Whether this film is an exploding building too far when it comes to the Die Hard franchise may yet to be seen, as some questions hang over the script and the supporting cast – unlike all the others no other major stars are involved in this project except Willis.
You’d imagine they’re going to have to kill officer McClane off someday or they’ll be trotting him out to help out his grandchildren.
As we’ve come to expect the film is full of wise cracks including ‘Yippe Ki-Yah Mother Russia’ and other more rude phrases.
Unfortunately, the world has moved on since ‘Die Hard’ and I think such mindless romps are started to wear very thin on audiences.
We don’t yet know if Willis has signed up for DH6, but only time (and box office receipts) will tell.
