It’s a Good Day to Die Hard – for the franchise!

In the first few minutes of A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth, loudest and the most wearisome part of the franchise, we meet Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch), a bespectacled gent with a shabby beard in high-alert confinement, playing chess with himself. He plays himself because apparently, it’s what super-villains do.

Komarov, whose personal profile reads billionaire, whistle blower and political prisoner, is a threat to world order (especially Russia); having secreted a file that incriminates corrupt politician Viktor Chagarin (Sergei Kolesnikov)  another villain, if you are yet to guess despite of the pricey suit he’s wearing.

In a separate incident - one that apparently makes no sense of space, timing and momentum, when it pops into the picture ; Jack McClane (Jai Courtney), John McClane’s estranged son, assassinates someone, but makes a deal to testify against Komarov.

John, played by Bruce Willis learns about Jack, flies over and within the next five minutes turns Moscow’s streets into United Nation’s biggest auto scrap-yard.

Mr. Willis’ entry in foreign soil is like flicking off a pin of a hand-grenade. He gets out of a taxi (a brief comedy scene about a cabbie who loves his American influence) and Kaboom!

From this moment the film turns into a compendium of explosions, debris, ratta-tatting gun-fires, paramilitary choppers, fly in and out of frame without warning while the local government stands by like this happens every other Sunday. And all this ruin of public safety and tax-dollars, apparently leads, to….nothing.

Jack turns out to be a CIA op, tasked to liberate and export Komarov and his voluptuous vixen-like daughter Irina (Yuliya Snigir, often clad in polished leather or figure-hugging assault gear) to the good guys.

At one point, Jack asks his father if he gets tired of trouble following him. John doesn’t have to answer because Mr. Willis’ muted expression, whacked by Skip Wood’s bland, indefatigable screenplay, carries ear-splitting volume. The film is a clutter, without plot or conviction.

Director John Moore, once an able talent behind Behind Enemy Lines and Flight of the Pheonix, and later of duds Max Payne and the Omen remake, gets an easy one-track pay-job to rumble through scenes, where Mr. Willis and McClane’s trademark wisecracks are wasted.

A brief bit by Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Lucy McClane, livens up a few frames, but her character – like that of Mr. Courtney – asks useless, stereotypical questions, that Mr. Willis answers with his stock, cocky expression. At one time I could easily hear his expressions saying: “Just Kill Me Already!”

“A Good Day to Die Hard” stars: Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Yuliya Snigir, Radivoje Bukvić and Cole Hauser.

Directed by John Moore, Produced by Alex Young, with a Screenplay by Skip Woods (based on characters created by Roderick Thorp). The film has Music by Marco Beltrami, Cinematography from Jonathan Sela and Editing by Dan Zimmerman.

Released by Geo Films and 20^th Century Fox