Directed by John Moore. Starring Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Yuliya Snigir, Radivoje Bukvic, Cole Hauser 15A cert, general release, 97 min
Bruce Willis's latest biff-bam-wallop is a loud but hardly riveting instalment in the creaky Die Hard franchise, writes
DONALD CLARKE
It’s not unheard of to run action beneath the credits of a contemporary motion picture. But, in the case of the latest Die Hard, one gets the sense the film-makers are doing their best to hurry us through the ordeal as quickly as is humanly possible. To call the film perfunctory would be to insult properly perfunctory events, such as that visit to your least-favourite uncle or the message you wrote on the leaving card for Marjory from accounts.
All of which is to clarify that John Moore’s fifth chapter in the ordnance’n’summary-justice cycle is not entirely terrible. The picture makes nice use of its Moscow locations (as well as its double in Budapest) and finds at least three amusing things for Bruce Willis to shout while leaping through windows. And, at nearly 40 minutes shorter than this week’s This Is 40, it doesn’t hang around long enough to become meaningfully boring.
Not for the first time, the plot resembles an assembly of cut sequences from a first-person shooter game. John McClane (Willis) travels to Moscow to visit his estranged son (Jai Courtney)
in prison. It very soon transpires that the boy is a CIA operative sent to extract some sort of digital MacGuffin from that German bloke out of The Lives of Others.
Before you can say “yippee ki yay mother-cut-to-explosion” (they still got saddled with a 15A), the bald incorrigible is driving SUV’s crazily at machine-gunning hoodlums. Somebody is not what he or she seems. Oh no! Somebody else is not what he or she seems. The urge to push the x button and hurry on to the next level is never far from the viewer’s mind.
Still, it’s hard to begrudge John Moore (Ireland’s most financially successful director) his role as the go-to guy for unnecessary sequels or remakes. A kind of ruthless efficiency hangs over the whole affair. Bruce gets to snarl. Jai gets to forgive. That poor helicopter gets to crash spectacularly to earth. And Moore has us home in time for tea.
There are worse things in heaven and earth.
