Funrahi Movie Reviews

A Good Day to Die Hard

MPAA Rating: R

Runtime: 1 hour 37 minutes (97 minutes)

Rated R for violence and language.

Genres: Action, Crime, Thriller

There's

No

Die

Hard

In

This

One!

2.5 out of 5

A Good Day to Die Hard Review

What's Good:
Action Sequences
What's Bad:
Lacks personality, McClane's ordinary appeal is missing.
Verdict:
There's no DIE HARD in this one!
Watch or Not:
Unnecessary but not Unwatchable.

Audience Ratings for A Good Day to Die Hard

55.0%
158 Ratings
1 2 3 4 5
hate it don't like it it's ok it's good it's great

Plot Summary

Bruce Willis is back as iconoclastic, take-no-prisoners cop John McClane, who for the first time finds himself on foreign soil after traveling to Moscow to help his wayward son Jack (Jai Courtney) – unaware that Jack is really a highly-trained CIA operative out to stop a nuclear weapons heist. With the Russian underworld in pursuit, and battling a countdown to war, the two McClanes discover their opposing methods make them unstoppable heroes.

Critics Reviews for A Good Day to Die Hard

10 Critics like this movie.
Reviews Counted: 40 | Positive Review: 4 | Negative Review: 36 | Average Rating: 1.9/5

What a disappointment.
Critic Score: 1/5

February 18, 2013 Full Review
Richard Roeper
Richard Roeper
Richard Roeper.com

I didn't think it was physically possible to doze off at a movie as loud as A Good Day to Die Hard, but for a few moments my mind found some distant, peaceful refuge.

February 15, 2013 Full Review
David Edelstein
David Edelstein
New York Magazine

It's all more than a little silly, but Willis' presence at least provides undercurrents of easy jocularity.
Critic Score: B-

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Chris Vognar
Chris Vognar
Dallas Morning News

For anyone who remembers the "Die Hard" adventures at their vital and exciting best, this film feels like a near-death experience.

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Joe Morgenstern
Joe Morgenstern
Wall Street Journal

Few fans of the series would disagree that this sclerotic fifth installment should probably be the last.

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Dana Stevens
Dana Stevens
Slate

This is the Magpie School of action filmmaking: Anytime things start to make so little sense that you might lose the audience, just throw something shiny up on screen to distract.

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Ian Buckwalter
NPR

John's appeal was always his ordinariness, but director John Moore has him surviving more explosions than Wile E. Coyote, and with hardly a scratch.
Critic Score: C

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Peter Rainer
Peter Rainer
Christian Science Monitor

An explosive, high-capacity-clip letdown.
Critic Score: 2/4

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Lisa Kennedy
Lisa Kennedy
Denver Post

I guess the people making A Good Day to Die Hard don't understand that mortality is one of John McClane's most endearing qualities. Turning him into a cyborg with a sense of self-deprecating humor makes this a low point in the series' history.
Critic Score: 2/4

February 14, 2013 Full Review
James Berardinelli
James Berardinelli
ReelViews

All Die Hard movies lack sense -- that's a given. This one lacks personality. And that's unforgivable.
Critic Score: C-

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Tom Long
Tom Long
Detroit News

Unnecessary but not unwatchable, this maintains a brisk pace as it moves through the familiar action set pieces, most of them decently orchestrated.

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Ben Sachs
Ben Sachs
Chicago Reader

If there's something crassly opportunistic about exploiting a real life disaster on the scale of Chernobyl for cheap thrills, that's part and parcel of the film's cynicism.

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Tom Charity
Tom Charity
CNN.com

Every action scene is telegraphed, and most of the dialogue is irrevocably stupid.
Critic Score: D-

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Laremy Legel
Laremy Legel
Film.com

This series needs to die here. That would be something to "Yippee Ki-Yay" about.
Critic Score: 1/4

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

Pretty much three well-staged action sequences strung together with the dumbest imaginable connective tissue.

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Andrew O'Hehir
Andrew O'Hehir
Salon.com

A quarter-century after it began, A Good Day to Die Hard continues the franchise without undue embarrassment.
Critic Score: 2.5/4

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Rick Groen
Globe and Mail

A movie like A Good Day to Die Hard ought to either hire someone who can write catchy dialogue and at least superficially plausible characters or just let the real artists, the stuntmen, run the whole picture. No Humans Allowed.

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Richard Corliss
Richard Corliss
TIME Magazine

This is the first Die Hard movie to run well under two hours (the incomprehensible final 30 minutes have been so furiously chopped, they deserve their own show on the Food Network).
Critic Score: 1/4

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Rene Rodriguez
Miami Herald

It took 25 years, but with the fifth and latest entry, "A Good Day to Die Hard," the series has finally devolved into joyless sludge.
Critic Score: 1.5/4

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Ty Burr
Ty Burr
Boston Globe

At this point, "Die Hard" no longer describes the franchise. It describes the fans who are still willing to turn out for the noise and nonsense.
Critic Score: 2/4

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Stephen Whitty
Stephen Whitty
Newark Star-Ledger

Willis and Courtney make a strong match, believable both as fractious family members and also as sarcastic adversaries forced by circumstances to work together.
Critic Score: 2.5/4

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Peter Howell
Peter Howell
Toronto Star

Both assaultive and tiresome, "A Good Day to Die Hard" barely registers on the action movie Richter scale. It goes bang, it goes boom, and then it blessedly goes away.
Critic Score: 1.5/4

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Ann Hornaday
Ann Hornaday
Washington Post

A Good Day to Die Hard wants to be a movie about family values - a father and son, bonding over bullets and bombs - but it's really just about the value of a box-office franchise, and its value is on the wane.
Critic Score: 2/4

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Steven Rea
Steven Rea
Philadelphia Inquirer

McClane has been stripped of any real traces of an actual three-dimensional character. We feel as if we're watching Bruce Willis in a Bruce Willis movie in which Bruce Willis can survive anything while taking out the villains, video-game style.
Critic Score: 1.5/4

February 14, 2013 Full Review
Richard Roeper
Richard Roeper
Chicago Sun-Times

No two viewers will assemble the same narrative from this Rorschach of running men, crashing glass, and hollered exposition.

February 13, 2013 Full Review
Alan Scherstuhl
Village Voice

Obnoxious, over the top and often dull.
Critic Score: 1.5/4

February 13, 2013 Full Review
Claudia Puig
Claudia Puig
USA Today

A Good Day to Die Hard isn't just the weakest of the Die Hard pictures; it's a lousy action movie on its own terms.
Critic Score: 1.5/4

February 13, 2013 Full Review
Michael Phillips
Michael Phillips
Chicago Tribune

True, a lot of stuff gets blown up and stunts that must have cost the Earth appear with startling regularity, but the sense of exhilaration and fun that marked the best of the series has gone unaccountably AWOL.
Critic Score: 2/5

February 13, 2013 Full Review
Kenneth Turan
Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times

Generally speaking, the action elements aren't the problem here. They're certainly loud enough. It's the obligatory intra-family squabbling and preposterous plotting that threaten to derail this nonsensical sequel.

February 13, 2013 Full Review
Peter Debruge
Variety

At 98 minutes, this is by far the shortest of the Die Hard films, the rest of which run more than two hours. But it ends not a moment too soon.

February 13, 2013 Full Review
Todd McCarthy
Todd McCarthy
Hollywood Reporter

Frenetically directed by John Moore from a sketchy script by Skip Woods, A Good Day to Die Hard has the dubious distinction of making John McClane unlikeable. He's had some bad days in the past, but this one finally got him down.

February 13, 2013 Full Review
Rafer Guzman
Rafer Guzman
Newsday

A Good Day to Die Hard is pointless and joyless, a barrage of noise and chaos, an onslaught of destruction without the slightest mention of consequence.

February 13, 2013 Full Review
Christy Lemire
Christy Lemire
Associated Press

If Harvard Business School wants to do a case study on how to debase a once-respected brand, they needn't look any further than the Die Hard movies.
Critic Score: 1.5/4

February 13, 2013 Full Review
Colin Covert
Colin Covert
Minneapolis Star Tribune

Die Hard 5 leaves room for McClane to make a few jokes about his thinning hair and to rue that he wasn't a better father when his kids were growing up. Oh, boo-hoo. Now go kill some more scumbags.
Critic Score: C

February 13, 2013 Full Review
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

It's "A Good Day to Die Hard," aka "We've Got No Story To Speak Of But We Do Have an Infinite Special Effects Budget and We're Not Afraid To Spend It."
Critic Score: 2/4

February 13, 2013 Full Review
Soren Anderson
Seattle Times

Willis may not be the film's saving grace, but he is some kind of grace nonetheless, really the only thing in the movie.
Critic Score: 1/4

February 13, 2013 Full Review
Mick LaSalle
Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Chronicle

This leaden flick is completely joyless.
Critic Score: 1/5

February 13, 2013 Full Review
Joe Neumaier
Joe Neumaier
New York Daily News

While some of the sequels have been entertaining enough, "A Good Day to Die Hard" signals that it may be a better day for John McClane to retire.
Critic Score: 2.5/5

February 13, 2013 Full Review
Bill Goodykoontz
Bill Goodykoontz
Arizona Republic

Mr. Willis has said in interviews that he's open to a sixth "Die Hard" film. Next time, Bruce, please read the script.
Critic Score: 1/4

February 13, 2013 Full Review
Lou Lumenick
Lou Lumenick
New York Post

Everything that made the first "Die Hard" memorable -- the nuances of character, the political subtext, the cowboy wit -- has been dumbed down or scrubbed away entirely.
Critic Score: 2/5

February 13, 2013 Full Review
A.O. Scott
A.O. Scott
New York Times

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