Why won’t you just die?

Well let’s face it – thechances of the fifth movie in ANY film franchise being spectacular were slim. But when Die Hard 4.0 (aka Live Free or Die Hard) was a bit rubbish, this one was bound to be equally shoddy. Which it was.

After the first three Die Hard films tied up the loose ends of a good trilogy pretty damn tightly, why anyone though the fourth film was a good idea is beyond me, let alone the fifth. Clearly a classic case of making sure the premise is squeezed for as much cash as possible – plus, of course, a chance for old Bruce to stretch his legs.

In all fairness, director John Moore does his best, despite his back catalogue being a list of remakes such as The Omen and game adaptations like Max Payne. There is a small improvement on the messy Die Hard 4.0; Moore does have the edge on Len Wiseman, and the CGI effects and stunts are a bit neater. However, taking the story outside of the USA was not a good idea, and hasn’t done the filmmakers any favours. Russia is a bit old school for this type of film, really.

Randomly placing jokes associated with the Cold War just aren’t clear to everyone and raise less than a few titters from the audience. McClane’s enthusiasm for going abroad to ‘kill all the scumbags’ seems a little too much, and loses the character any last shreds of respect he was clinging to – not to mention the fact that, when he gets abroad, he is not quite sure who the ‘scumbags’ are. The chases through a snow-covered Moscow are like a poor attempt at an American James Bond, and the somewhat drawn out climax is littered with clichés of helicopters and disinterested gunfight.

Considering the poor sod is going through the same pile of crap for the fifth time, Bruce Willis is, I guess, still quite enthusiastic. Much more than I would be his situation, that’s for sure. But that doesn’t make up for the mess made of the well thought out system that made the first three films work: for a successful Die Hard, you need a hero (McClane, obviously), a family member in danger, a bad guy and a sidekick. In this fifth Die Hard, this pattern has been messed up. The family member and the sidekick have been combined into one whiny irritating character – McClane’s secret agent son – who intersperses the breaks between plot twists and gun fights with annoying father-son bonding.

The best part of Die Hard was always the key relationship between trigger-happy McClane and a tech-savvy, hugely intelligent evil mastermind. This was already buggered up in Die Hard 4.0, but it was made even worse in this latest film – the bad guys are now Russians we barely see, and hence can’t work up that much anger towards. Another let down is that any final ditch attempt at excitement brought on by violence has been well and truly doused in order to be sure of that 12A rating.

Frankly, I really wouldn’t bother.