Critic Reviews

Far more than most action stars getting on in years, Bruce Willis has aged nicely into the role. Maybe it’s that shaved pate of his, a bullet-head that still looks primed for any chamber.

Willis himself could not appear less enthusiastic in the role, and doesn’t phone in his performance here so much as clip it to a nearby pigeon and hope for the best. Yet perversely, his apparent lack of interest works rather well: McClane, after all, is now a grizzled back-number who has bumbled his way into a younger man’s action movie.

While some of the sequels have been entertaining enough, A Good Day to Die Hard signals that it may be a better day for John McClane to retire.

To paraphrase a classic of Reagan-era cinema, A Good Day to Die Hard is a bad day to stop sniffing glue.

In the way of workaday flicks built around long-in-the-tooth badasses, Die Hard 5 leaves room for McClane to make a few jokes about his thinning hair and to rue that he wasn't a better father when his kids were growing up. Oh, boo-hoo.

Willis still packs that rapscallion charm, balancing his wisecracking, reluctant-hero shtick with the unstoppable, all-American quality that earned the original film its title. But the chemistry between him and Courtney is nonexistent, with the younger thesp, who makes co-star Cole Hauser look expressive, adding so little to the equation, one can only hope the studio doesn't plan to pass the franchise on to him.

If there is to be a sequel to this thudding slab of cacophony, why not just go all the way and make John McClane a superhero?

For all its mayhem, for all the smashing windows and kabooming fireballs, the grenade launchers and giant helicopters, A Good Day to Die Hard not only fails to top its predecessors, it also forgets the basic Die Hard rules.

We have entered generic action movie territory and the idiosyncrasies that made the series special at the outset have been leeched out, papered over, or turned into obligatory inserts.

The fifth edition of the franchise, A Good Day to Die Hard, is the brawniest and most brainless of the bunch.