For audiences looking for a little more bang for their bucks, there’s the latest in the increasingly implausible Die Hard series, A Good Day to Die Hard. Bruce Willis returns as John McClain for a film that drops him in the middle of Russia with his estranged son Jack, a highly-trained CIA operative, as they attempt to stop a nuclear weapons heist.
I’d say more about the plot of the film, but that would be putting in more effort than the filmmakers did. How little does story matter in this film? For starters, this film is just barely over an hour and a half, at least half an hour shorter than each of the previous entries in this series. The semblance of a plot that’s present is basically there to serve as setups for the next over-the-top action sequence. And while some of the sequences are admittedly fairly entertaining (the car chase in Moscow is pretty damn entertaining), not even Bruce Willis’ relentless charm can save this film from being anything other than a colossal disappointment. One thing Die Hard fans will appreciate, at least—unlike 2007’s Live Free or Die Hard, A Good Day… is rated R, which means the language returns in all its glory.