Here we are, movie number one in my Blu-Ray collection. And it just so happens to be a sequel in one of my favorite series; the Die Hard/John McClane movies. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this series, well I'm actually not sure how to finish that sentence without sounding like a jerk. The original Die Hard starred, an at the time lesser known, Bruce Willis as New York detective John McClane. But I'm not going to spend too much time on the history here as the Die Hard collection will be coming up in a future post but for now we are going alphabetically.
But now back to A Good Day to Die Hard. I enjoy Bruce Willis and most films he is in, probably because of Die Hard. So seeing John McClane back on the screen was fun although this movie didn't really have the same feel as the other Die Hard films. It did bring back the "fish out of water" scenario for McClane as now he appears to be out of his league, traveling to Russia to save his son. I say bring back because in the first Die Hard, John McClane is a New York detective but goes to California for the holidays to be with his family. And also in the original Die Hard, his son is a young boy exploited on TV by the sleazy journalist Thornburg played by William Atherton.
Overall the movie was entertaining with some cool action scenes which you come to expect from a Die Hard movie. But I don't think it really fits with the original or sequels. I don't know if they were trying to go the "pass the torch" route so Jai Courtney could take over the series as the younger McClane but for as Die Hard, it felt too big for John McClane. Don't get me wrong, Bruce Willis held his own as he always does but I don't think he was on screen enough. Die Hard is John McClane. I think, if anything, his son should have been helping him stop the terrorists. The way he had Samuel L. Jackson and Justin Long in previous Die Hard movies.
