A Good Day to Die Hard

Directed by John Moore

(R)

*

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“It took 25 years,” but the Die Hard series “has finally devolved into joyless sludge,” said Ty Burr in The Boston Globe. Sure, “the cars and choppers and buildings blow up real good” in this fifth installment, but “nothing in it makes sense,” and it’s even “terribly filmed.” Bruce Willis reprises his role as John McClane in a project that completes a film-by-film makeover of the ex-cop that has “bastardized one of action cinema’s most enduring icons,” said Nick Schager in New York magazine. Back in 1988, McClane was an average-joe detective reluctantly answering the call to action. Now, as he tries to get his CIA operative son (Jai Courtney) out of the middle of a dangerous Russian plot, he’s a smart-aleck superman so invincible that he’d be “perfectly at home in a Looney Tunes cartoon.” A Good Day “isn’t just the weakest of the Die Hard pictures; it’s a lousy action movie on its own terms,” said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. There’s “a misjudged reliance on absurd digital effects,” lame villains, and poor dialogue. The run time barely passes 90 minutes, but it feels longer. “A lot longer.” Even Willis seems bored.