A Good Day To Die Hard

Recently, I went to imdb and saw the possibility of another Die Hard movie with Bruce Willis scheduled for 2015 with the title of Die Hardest and I thought to myself, "What the fuck!  Are they really going to resurrect John McClane's ass again after this fiasco of a movie?"  Seriously though,  there is no really good day or night to watch A Good Day To Die Hard.  This time, John McClaine goes to Russia to help out his estranged son (Jai Courtney) who's on trial for murder.  Oh and he didn't know his son was in the CIA and so becomes part of a plot with his son to stop a political nuclear weapons bla bla bla thing.  This film lost me from the very beginning, as it was soo unbelievably implausible as to why McClane would go to Russia and what the fuck was he gonna do there.  Shoot and blow shit up to get his son out of jail?  Oh, my bad, someone already basically does that for him unintentionally.  How convenient for McClane and so now we can finally have him driving, shooting, and tearing his way through the streets of Moscow.  Yeah, he's back at home now folks.  From there, it just gets worse as John Sr. and Jr.  go after the Russian bad guys while repairing their relationship.  There is no sense of urgency to this limp film and Willis' limp performance is just as annoying as the badly played Russian villains. There is better character development , plot believability, and enjoyment in a 1st person shooter video game.  That 92 million dollar budget could have been put to better use and seems like a financial crime.

The Last Stand

Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as an aging sheriff of a small town, that just happens to serve as the last destination point before crossing Mexico for a most wanted and recently escaped fugitive drug lord played by Eduardo Noriega.  I have to be honest here.  I naturally wasn't expecting a lot from this movie given that it was the return of Schwarzenegger as a lead actor after his notorious family scandal.  But I give this movie credit for playing it very smart and being surprisingly enjoyable.  I mean it's wise, for instance to pepper The Last Stand with a fairly talented cast in the humor of Johnny Knoxville,  the dramatic gravity of Forest Whitaker, and the outrageous villany of Peter Stormare.    Then add to the recipe for the first half of the movie generally without focusing on Schwarzenegger's character (this is a very good thing), action plot sequences that greatly mirror the recent success of the Fast and Furious movies.  Finally, stir carefully resisting the urge to abundantly dip the dialogue with generic action movie one liners, and let Schwarzenegger finish the film by doing his best version of a still tough squinty-eyed Clint Eastwood.  Of course, by this time, you really don't care about the increasingly washed over illogic of the plot.  It's just good  action entertainment which is something Bruce Willis and company should have learned better when they made A Good Day To Die Hard.