Blu-Ray Review: A Good Day To Die Hard

A Good Day to Die Hard, the latest addition to the storied action franchise, comes out on Blu-ray and DVD today. Read my review after the break.

John McClane is back, and this time he’s working with his son. McClane (Bruce Willis) goes to Russia to see his son Jack (Jai Courtney) after Junior kills a man in cold blood. It turns out Jack is CIA with the goal of infiltrating the trial of political prisoner Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch). Yuri has an incriminating file on a high ranking Russian official, so a team is sent to extract Yuri. John interrupts Jack as he is saving Yuri from the extraction, and the day just goes downhill from there.

As a simple action movie, this film isn’t bad. There are plenty of explosions, gunfire, and just general destruction. However, it doesn’t really feel like a Die Hard movie. What I love about the series is how John McClane is stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he is the only one that can stop the bad guys. The last movie, Live Free or Die Hard, moved away from the premise a bit, but this one just ignores it. It’s all spectacle and little charm. Aside from an admittedly clever plot twist, this is just a cookie cutter action film.

If you are a fan of the film, then you’re in luck with the Blu-ray / DVD + Digital Copy. There is an extended cut of the film (which is only a few minutes longer), deleted scenes, a gallery of stills, pre-visualizations of cut scenes, and a few making-of featurettes. Watching it all almost convinced me that this was a good film with a lot of thought put into it. Almost.

Rating: 2.5/5