BEFORE: It must be tough when you're in charge of maintaining a franchise, because you probably want to do something fresh and original, but if you go too far off from what people expect, you can turn off long-time fans, and risk killing the franchise. It's kind of like the TV show "Celebrity Wife Swap", which ran out of married celebrities willing to participate a few months back, so they've moved on to non-married celebrities and even single-parent celebrities, which sort of destroys the whole concept of the Show. Swapping friends or personal assistants shouldn't count - if they don't have wives to swap, how can they qualify?
Bruce Willis carries over from "Perfect Stranger".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Live Free or Die Hard" (Movie #585)
AFTER: I re-read my review of the fourth film in the "Die Hard" franchise, and remembered that part of the plot involved McClane re-connecting with his estranged daughter. Tonight they flip that plot and he tracks down his son, who he apparently hasn't heard from in years. We the audience have to fill in a lot of blanks here, because the son is in prison, and we're not sure what for, or how McClaine found out about this situation. Ostensibly he's on vacation, but that may have just been a cover story to get a visa.
This lack of detail sort of continued throughout the whole film, I thought. It's long on action, but short on detail. Who is the man who gets busted out of prison, and why is he important? Who's the official putting him on trial? Who are the people trying to kill him, and what is this file that they all seem to be after?
The best action sequence takes place on a Russian highway, with Jack in a van being pursued by a sort of tank/armored car, and papa John bringing up the rear in various stolen vehicles, trying to help out his son from afar. Together they manage to shatter every windshield in sight, and damage nearly every car in Moscow in some way. McClane travels around, over, and through whatever he needs to to keep up and take down the bad guys (at least we're meant to assume they're bad guys, again, not much detail has been supplied at this point).
Like last night's film, there's a twist, and it changes everything - to the point where what took place before this reveal now makes very little sense. It's a plot sucker-punch when you're led to believe in something for nearly an entire film, and then it's revealed at the last minute that that thing was never even a thing. Then why did everyone act like it was a thing? It would be like me saying I wrote the greatest American novel, and walked around like I was the best writer, and expecting everyone to treat me as such, when there is no novel. Eventually someone's going to want to see that novel, or else the jig would be up.
It's a valiant effort with some exciting (but hard-to-believe) action sequences, but essentially I feel like the Emperor has no clothes here. I'll probably be back for "Never Say Die Hard" or "Why Won't You Just Die Hard Already" or whatever they call it, but there are clearly diminishing returns.
Also starring Jai Courtney (last seen in "Jack Reacher"), Sebastian Koch, Yuliya Snigir, Cole Hauser (last seen in "Pitch Black"), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (last seen in "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter").
RATING: 4 out of 10 shattered windows
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