A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILERS!!!

Discussion in 'TV & Media' started by Captain Craig, Feb 14, 2013.

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How do you grade A Good Day to Die Hard?

Poll closed Sep 2, 2013.
  1. A

    1 vote(s)
    5.0%
  2. B

    4 vote(s)
    20.0%
  3. C

    4 vote(s)
    20.0%
  4. D

    6 vote(s)
    30.0%
  5. F

    5 vote(s)
    25.0%
  1. Captain Craig

    Captain Craig Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The 5th entry in the Die Hard saga drops today(2/14/13) stateside. I understand it opened in some international markets last weekend.

    A Good Day to Die Hard official site with trailer

    [​IMG]

    Rottentomatoes.com

     
  2. Captaindemotion

    Captaindemotion Admiral Admiral

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    Hopefully seeing next week but so far the reviews I've seen have been overwhelmingly negative. Shame, as I was really hoping for a return to form.
     
  3. davejames

    davejames Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    By all accounts, it's even MORE ridiculous and over the top than the last one was.
     
  4. Captain Craig

    Captain Craig Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    Grade: B-

    I went to the marathon, we had about 50 people at it.

    It's not as bad as the reviews suggest AT ALL but at this point people have their own ideas and will pile on cause it seems the "cool thing" to do.

    Still objectively I can agree that reviews calling the villain the worst of the series is fair. You just don't "love to hate" him. He's pretty generic and two dimensional. You love to hate the Grubers(1&3), same for Gabriel in pt.4. Taking it out of franchise you love to be able to connect with some villains like Magneto or Loki and a solid villain means it contends for an "A" grade. So imo, a B+ was the best it could attain with the villain choice and backstory.
    I blame a lack of unified vision when I get moments in a trailer but not the film itself. Marketing and Editing need to be in synch.

    I've not read but a few of the horrid reviews but this film has an actual twist in it the other series don't have.
    the bad guy you first get isn't really the lead bad guy
    The action is great and during the second act father and son start to form a bond where it was clear from the first act resentment was firmly entrenched. The Lucy moments were nice.

    It's the first to break the "non-rule" that McClane is thrust into the role of being the hero. To what degree that's broken could be debatable.

    Still, this is a fun action filled movie with plenty of cool sequences that are worth seeing on the big screen. Even as the "worst" DH film it's a low B score and better than so much else. Deeming it "unwatchable" is pure hyperbole(which I've seen other places).

    Apparently it made about $900K for midnights.
     
  5. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    Wish I had gone to the marathon but going to the movies at noon on a weekday and staying there for the next 10 hours isn't at all sane or practical. I'm going to see this movie Saturday night no matter what. I've not too hard of expectations for it I just want to be entertained.
     
  6. Captain Craig

    Captain Craig Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    The early estimated report is that A Good Day to Die Hard will have an OD of around $9m. Although some speculation is it might be under reported. Be nice to get $10m for an OD in Feb on a Thursday.

    Reported budget=$92m
     
  7. Agent Richard07

    Agent Richard07 Admiral Admiral

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    I gave it a C. I thought it was pretty weak. It had a story that didn't quite come into focus and as Captain Craig said, the bad guys were pretty bland and poorly fleshed out. Its main highlight, aside from the action, is that it furthers the adventures of the iconic John McClane and gives us some decent father/son drama woven into the action. Die Hard has always been about family issues and they did okay in advancing that here, as much as 5th installment in a 25 year old action movie franchise could anyway. Jai Courtney was pretty good as Jr. and played well against Willis but I don't think I'd want to see him carry the franchise if that's what they were suggesting at the end. As for the action itself, some of it was pretty generic, but some of it was fun, elevated only by Willis' brand of badassery. A few scenes were as over the top as what we got in Die Hard 4 and those were pretty fun too. Watching Bruce Willis go through the ringer hasn't gotten old yet.

    Another highlight I want to point out is Yuila Snigir. She wasn't Maggie Q's supermodel mercenary with graceful yet brutal fighting skills but she was pretty easy on the eyes and carried herself well enough as the hardened villainess with sex appeal. Here are her various looks from the movie…

    [​IMG]

    I was satisfied with the runtime. This wasn't the kind of movie I could have sat though for over 2 hours.

    Yeah, looks like the critics hated it because the plot was too thin even for an action movie and it was a weak installment in the franchise. And it looks like the public likes it because it's Die Hard and they probably enjoyed the ride at least a little, but mainly, it's Die Hard. I don't think it stands on its own as a good action film in its own right.
     
  8. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    How can this be a Die Hard when you can't even describe it that way.

    Sudden Death is Die Hard in a stadium. Under Siege is Die Hard on a boat. Under Siege 2 is Die Hard on a train. You get the idea.

    And Die Hard 4 was... Die Hard on the East Coast?
    And Die Hard 5 is... Die Hard in Russia?

    There's already one big mistake right there.



    It's then it's simply no Die Hard when the guy Willis plays is a super hero who walks away from the action scenes like nothing happened. In the original three Die Hards, he always cried at some point, he panicked, shit his pants several times, and in the end he was a physical wreck.

    The guy walked on fucking glass and spent the next time crying in the bathroom.


    I also hate how he simply walks (or drives) over civilians in this film. What the hell, McClane?
     
  9. Dream

    Dream Admiral Admiral

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    Don't forget, TNG's Starship Mine was Die Hard on the Enterprise!:lol:
     
  10. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    And Die Hard 3 was Die Hard... in a city?!
     
  11. StolenThunder

    StolenThunder Poster Premium Member

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    Everything was a bit dull. The villain, his son, the humour, the bad guy. Just generally underwhelming.
     
  12. Saul

    Saul Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    Better than Live Free or Die Hard. Nice action. That's it. Not as bad as I thought it would. I heard 'fuck' and 'mother fucker' on a PG rating. How bout you guys?
     
  13. Eduardo

    Eduardo Captain Captain

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    Between a D and a C. Plot is barely there, the action pieces are nice but repetitive, and there is almost no character or plot development at all.
     
  14. doubleohfive

    doubleohfive Fleet Admiral

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    Saw the film last night at the Arclight in Sherman Oaks.

    Save your money. This movie is awful.

    F.
     
  15. Captain Craig

    Captain Craig Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    My ranking for the series would look like this now.

    1. Die Hard
    2. DH3
    3. DH4
    4. DH2
    5. DH5

    I think the biggest problem is the choice of how they chose to go about making the uranium the mcguffin of the film. The bad guys are essentially two guys who used to work at Chernobyl, skimmed some weapons grade U235 and stored it away secretly with one key to the vault. Both went different paths. Stealing money is one thing and the other villains were fun to hate for doing so. You don't really find any empathy or sympathy with a guy whose going to sell uranium to some terrorists who will kill millions.

    The switcheroo for the audience and some characters was that there never was a FILE containing critical political intel. File was code for KEY. They finally spell it out of course with about 10min left in the film.

    John McClane at first is fighting for his son. It's not till after the hotel ballroom sequence when Jack(with rebar in his side) explains what the "file" contains that John gets fired up to stop some bad guys and his character comes back to life and is enjoyable to watch for the next 2/3 of the film.

    The action is great and yeah the plot has issues but then again so did Skyfall and people ate that shit up (I did, but it's a structurally flawed film) while still praising it. The plot in that film is just asinine but worth seeing as well cause you like the protagonist and the action is well done.
    Last I looked it's Cinemascore was a B+ and had a low 80's audience score at RT so overall audiences are liking it, it's just not performing based on Fox's projections. Going to fall at least $10m short it looks like. So pure WOM isn't keeping people away.
     
  16. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    A Good Day to Die Hard

    My Grade: B-


    -------------------------------

    Frankly, I think this movie is getting needlessly panned by critics and some movie goers. I'm really not sure what they expected compared to how most action movies are these days. The movie is no where near as good as the first or third movies but it's certainly not terrible. I think I might go as far as to saying it's better than LFoDH. (Ranking, best to worst: Die Hard, Die Hard with a Vengence, Die Hard 2, A Good Day to Die Hard, Live Free or Die Hard) but the gaps between those various ranks aren't very big.

    A Good Day to Die Hard starts with some expository information between a Russian prisoner and a Russian government official (I'm not clear what his position is.) The prisoner is set to go on "trial" shortly where he's expected to go to prison for the rest of his life unless he gives our governmental official the information he wants. The prisoner refuses, citing the usual movie reasons of having nothing to live for outside of the prison.

    Meanwhile John "Jack" McClane, Jr. walks into a Russian night club and performs a hit and finds himself quickly arrested. This ends up to be part of a mission he's on for the CIA to capture the Russian prisoner (in hindsight I'm not sure how) as he has information the US Government needs to possibly keep dangerous weapons and materials out of the government official.

    Once Jack is arrested John McClane takes a trip to Moscow in order to reunite and be with his estranged son and soon finds himself in the middle of the CIA operation to protect the Russian scientist, recover the information he has and get him back to the states with his daughter. Naturally, as is usually the case with the Die Hard movies, nothing goes to plan for either the heroes or the bad guys nor is everything as it seems.

    The movie benefits from not being gimped by a PG-13 rating and not being weighed down too much by comic relief moments and scenes (glances at Justin Long and Kevin Smith.)

    The movie gets to the action pretty quickly and only processionally lets up for character scenes, unlike in the previous movie we do get some nice scenes of John "playing cop" and putting the pieces of things together. Even things that seemingly go over the head of his CIA-operative son.

    Everything eventually builds up to our climatic scene in the ruins of the town near the melted down Chernobyl reactor.

    The movie gets off to a decent start but I think it loses some steam in the middle -particularly during a protracted car-chase scene- but once John and his son begin working together on the mission (at first the younger McClane is hostile towards his father) things pick up, there's some great moments, and the final act battle while with plenty of over-the-top scenes and pieces plays out very well.

    If there's one complaint I have about the movie is that it suffers from the "spastic camera" disease that inflicts many Hollywood action movies. The camera is almost constantly in motion as if it was filmed by Michael Bay suffering from advanced Parkinson's while having a seizure. There's some places where it works (there's some nice long-shots of the car-chase scene) but other places... not so much. But it's a fairly minor issue in an otherwise good movie.

    I guess to register another complaint I'd say this movie (and the previous one) seemed to forget that John McClane is supposed to be an "every man." Not Rambo or an Arnold Schwarzenegger type. He's not supposed to be a man who can fall from a flaming helicopter, crash through several windows, into a drainage pool and then pretty much shrug it off. Watching the first movies again there's plenty of times John gets hurt and it shows. His action-ability is severely hampered in the first movie after walking through broken glass.

    The movies also keeps upping the ante. The first and second movie are pretty trivial instances, where if McClane failed pretty much little of consequence would happen to the world as a whole. If he failed in the third movie, there may have been world-wide economic turmoil but it's hard to say. When we get to the fourth movie potentially the security of the country is at stake and in this one a WWIV situation is entirely possible if McClane fails. It's all a bit much about a movie series that was originally about some "dumb Irish flatfoot from Brooklyn" being the wrong guy at the wrong place at the wrong time.

    Maybe if we're to do another movie we need to get back to what made this movie series work, and redefined action movies. Stick John McClane in a building with limited help, limited resources and not much more than his wits. John McClane talking on a CB complaining about the taste of Twinkies is much truer to the character -for me- than John McClane doing ridiculous driving stunts in a Mercedes SUV during Soviet rush-hour.

    All the same, I liked this movie. It was a good fun movie that is better than the previous one but still far from the first.
     
  17. OdoWanKenobi

    OdoWanKenobi Admiral Admiral

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    Die Hard 6 needs to be about John McClane fighting the terrorists that take over the hospital where's staying in the cancer ward.

    Seriously...walking around Chernobyl with no radiation suit. Why do movies seem to not give a crap about the effects of radiation? It drove me nuts in The Dark Knight Rises, too. Everyone in Gotham is doomed. Thanks Batman.

    This movie was pretty atrocious, and I actually liked Live Free or Die Hard. I'm about ready to say it's the dumbest action movie I've sat through since Transformers 2.
     
  18. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    Radiation levels at Chernobyl are at fairly "safe" levels. I'm not saying build a vacation home there, but short-term exposure is fine. The area has been slightly more "opened up" in recent years with more and more researchers spending time there studying the effects of urban decay, the impact of radiation on the environment and there's even occasional tour groups who go through there. Those who "work" there long term usually do so in two-weeks on, two-weeks off shifts or something like that. And I'm sure are taking iodine pills or something. The more dangerous areas are closer to the reactor that melted down where very, very limited exposure needs to happen. But even then, there's still people who work there, granted in protective suits.

    Besides regardless of the "reality" in the movie we're told the radiation levels were safe. Hell even if the pool they fell in was a cooling pool for used reactants they would have been safe unless they actually swam down and got close to the reactor casks.
     
  19. OdoWanKenobi

    OdoWanKenobi Admiral Admiral

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    Ok, then my information is false. I was under the impression that's really not a place you want to be at all. It and surrounding area are still pretty much a no man's land.

    Still, the rest of the movie did not impress me in the slightest.
     
  20. Mr Light

    Mr Light Admiral Admiral

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    Re: A Good Day to Die Hard (aka DH5): Grade, Review, Discuss---SPOILER

    Die Hard 5 was not a BAD movie, but it was not as good as any of the previous ones at all. I felt like there was an entire third act missing. The Chernobyl part felt like the middle of the story and not the end (minus the deaths). The bad guy's plot was not half as ingenious and cool as the ones in the first four movies. McClaine was a spectator in his own movie.

    3-2-1 (all very close together) ... 4 ... 5

    I actually just rewatched 4 and it held up a lot better than I thought it would. It's not as good as the first three, but it's pretty good! I saw 3 last night and that one really holds the nostalgia vote for me. It's the one I grew up watching over and as a teenager. I love all the NYC location filming and Jeremy Irons and his plot is the best one in the series, even over Alan Rickman.