Movie Review: A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

I was very hesitant to watch Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth movie in the franchise released in 2007, for the first time a few years back. Considering the huge time gap between 3 and 4, I was concerned it wasn't going to capture the same spirit that made the first three movies fun action fests. So color me surprised when it turned out to be a rock solid entry, and I'll even say Die Hard 4 is BETTER than 2 and 3. So with that in mind, I was so willing to see A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth film, despite all the negative reaction it got.

The first 30-some minutes put me in a state of worry and semi-panic, as the movie was doing a bunch of things I wasn't thrilled to see in a Die Hard film: John McClane's bizarre lack of screen presence and lines, a weird, stylized opening credits, and shaky cam! Sooooooo much shaky cam! The destructive chase scene that engulfs the opening act could have been so much better if the cam wasn't shaking every damn chance it got. To add insult to injury, the camera sometimes zooms in and out, apparently to give a sense of tension or whatever. It didn't work. It just added to the overall embarrassment to how the chase scene was handled, camera-wise.

But I still had hope, hope that the rest of the movie would still be a fun fest like Die Hard 4. Instead, I was welcomed to an ABSURD amount of padding whenever possible, dragging a surprisingly short Die Hard movie (98 minutes) out as long as possible. It's almost like, when it was time to make Die Hard 5, they only thought about the chase scene at the beginning, and started filming based on that. Once they finished those scenes, the crew was probably like, "Oh, wait... we gotta make 68 more minutes?" And from there, I saw nothing but pointless scene after pointless scene with next to zero tension, drama, or action. There's an "action" sequence during the mid-point, but it really involves both McClanes (oh yeah, his son's in this) hiding behind a bar, getting captured, followed by a long, boring torture scene, and then running from a helicopter for two seconds. They don't even TRY to fight it.

The most horrible thing about this movie is that John McClane doesn't even feel like the main character. For the first 60-some minutes of the film, John McClane is normally just standing in the background, usually asking something to the equivalent of, "What's going on? Huh? Who's this? Huhhh??", which is then followed by some person immediately telling him to shut his mouth. Sure, McClane has always played the unwanted underdog by stupid police chiefs or other officials in previous films, but they take it to the extreme here. And when McClane actually does something productive, the way it's presented feels like he's on auto pilot. When a Swat-esque team comes barging in a room, McClane doesn't dive for cover and spout a bunch of wise-ass comments, he stands completely still, picks up a rapid-fire weapon, and kills everyone while screaming, "I'm on vacation!!". Ugh. It truly feels like Die Hard 5 GUEST STARRING Bruce Willis.

Die Hard 5 also tries too hard to be more of a thriller than a straight action movie. Yeah, other Die Hards had a lair of mystery to the bad guy's motives, but Die Hard 5 wants you to keep guessing. Except this hurts the movie because you don't have a damn clue who the main baddy is, so you don't know who to root to be killed off. There's this old guy who doesn't have enough screen time.... but then there's this other guy!... who doesn't have much screen time. But wait! There's this woman! Except she doesn't have much screen time and her inner villainy isn't that great. But, but then! And that's EXACTLY what's wrong with this structure. By the time we know who the main bad guy is, I couldn't help but think, "I don't care... just end the movie in a respectable way."

The climax of A Good Day to Die Hard is filled with even more padding, with McClanes sneaking around and clocking guards behind there backs, followed by half-assed gunfights against people we don't care about because the movie doesn't allow these people to flesh out to a degree for us to care about. John McClane shouts "I'm on vacation!" one more time, the main bad guy falls off a building in slow motion, supposedly to mimic the iconic moment from the first film, and a helicopter crashes in a nice special effects sequence. Both McClanes survive, hugs and kisses for all those involved, I guess, and the credits roll with a Rolling Stones song...

After Die Hard 4, I thought it was impossible to make a BAD Die Hard movie, but I guess Die Hard 5 proved me wrong with its endless amounts of shallowness. If Die Hard 6 is really going to be Bruce Willis' final film in the series, then whoever writes and directs that movie will have to blow me the hell away after this amazing waste of time. In fact, I refuse A Good Day to Die Hard as an official sequel, and have instead replaced it with 2010's Red as Die Hard 5. If you didn't like THAT movie, then that's a good indicator of how dreadful A Good Day to Die Hard is.

Shame of the Week - A Video Game Review Incident

Hey, I finally posted something new! I actually wanted to express my feelings on something that's been happening for the past few days, and it felt like this was the only place I can think of to spill it at the moment.

I like Thunderbolt, I think the website has a bunch of interesting articles and reviews, and I like frequenting its forums because its users normally have interesting things to say about the current state of gaming. One of the things I always find the most amusing, though, is reading the comments section for certain reviews, due to how silly some of the complaints are. A recent example can be seen in this BioShock Infinite review, where two comments (as of this writing) trash the review because of the 8/10 score. "The score you guys give this game is sickening." "Oh come on. 8 out of 10? It’s sad when some don’t realise the importance of this game claim to be an authority on video game quality. Gamers aren’t all 13 year old boys." Priceless. Some reviews get a stronger reaction than others, and I always took the Thunderbolt's staff lack of response to these comments as a sign of the obvious: that these comments are amazingly stupid.

However, something of note has happened within the past few days, when a Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes review was posted on May 22. The days that followed the review's release has seen an influx of comments denouncing the review. No surprise there. BUT, I started taking real notice when the lot started complaining that the review was hurting the Metacritic score, and that they all started begging for the review to be either taken down or rewritten to accommodate a higher score, so that the Metacritic score wasn't "damaged". Just in case this review happens to disappear (I doubt it, but you can never tell with human nature), I took the liberty of capturing some choice comments on the matter:

 The first time I read that comment in the first image, my jaw nearly dropped. REGARDLESS OF THE QUALITY OF THE REVIEW, for someone to tell a reviewer to change the score or remove a review just so a game can sell better is an amazing statement. He's not even trying to sugarcoat it. Also, "It's completely different from my experience playing the game." Really? You mean a completely different human being, with different tastes and views, happen to have a differing opinion of the same game than you? And he expresses this in a review, aka one guy's personal view of a product, AKA A REVIEW? So I figured the Thunderbolt staff was gonna do their usual silent treatment of the comments section, but the reviewer in question posted a few times, and actually took the comments like a champ. However, another staffer chimed in:

So that's it. You get a few nerd-tantrums from the Internet and you cave in. What, were you afraid of bad publicity, afraid that Metacritic is going to remove you? So much for sticking to your guns, and not to mention letting one of your writers out to hang like that. I don't know what the submission process is like over at Thunderbolt, but if one or two people oversee what gets put up.... then why was this put up in the first place if you feared such a "backlash" as the one demonstrated in the comments section? You let the whiners win, and from now on, every time there's a low-rated review on the site, they'll think that enough bickering is going to get the review removed or re-rated for the sake of a Metacritic score.

Damn you, Metacritic. You'll be the death of us!

Nerd Stuff

Well, it's been a while since I posted anything in this blog. The reason? I simply keep forgetting.

To follow up on my last entry, though, I HAVE played Sonic 4: Episode II, and I was actually surprised it turned out better than expected. The game fixes a number of gripes I have with Episode I, but I wouldn't go so far to call it fantastic. It's fun and playable, but I'm just dissatisfied that it still simply wants to remake stages from previous games. You can read more in this review I wrote. As for playing Rayman on Sega Saturn: I have not. I dunno why, but I'm just very hesitant to jump into it, even though the allure of playing a 2D platformer sounds fun. I guess I'm concerned that it might be too much of a collect-a-thon, the type of action game that turns me off the most. I could easily play the game to find out or just do some fact-checking on the Internet, but I'm just REALLY that lazy.

Now for current nerd activities!

For the last two months, I've been going out of my way to collect every US-released Lupin the Third DVD available, sans re-releases. A few years back, I actually attempted to do this, as well, purchasing the Pioneer/Geneon second series DVD releases, but I gave up after the 6th volume. How come? Because I also was collecting the Funimation releases of the annual TV specials and theatrical movies. And the ones I picked... really sucked. That was pretty much the reason I went on a hiatus with the purchases. The only reason I resumed buying the DVDs is thanks in part to the release of a new DVD collection containing all the episodes of the first TV series, which has never seen a US release of any kind until now! This reignited the flame to complete my DVD collection, and continued collecting the Pioneer/Geneon and Funimation releases. Nothing's changed, the former is still good and the latter still sucks. It boggles my mind how they have an entire year, every year, to come up with ONE story, and 90% of the time, it turns out to be crap. Then again, the blame probably falls more on the directors, each year normally containing a new one, for the lack of "oomp!" I mean, there's a lot of stuff out there in the medium that has a lot of plots you see coming a mile away, but some still manage to be entertaining as all heck thanks to fun direction, pacing, and character development. I seem to be more of a fan of the pre-90s Lupin stuff thanks to this, I think, because the stories and pacing still feel energetic, like the people making still believed they can make awesome and off-the-wall material. This feeling is mostly gone from the "newer" stuff.

I'd write more, but I'm tired of typing this entry. Hope it doesn't take another four months to make another blog entry.

Video Game Stuff - Brave Fencer Musashi and Imports

This week I managed to get my second Sega Saturn and three import titles to play with it, though I'm a bit of a scatter brain at the moment to really dig into them. I was busy finishing my Brave Fencer Musashi review which took longer than I expected. Having replayed the game for the first time in over 10 years, I forgot it was a longer game than I originally thought. I guess that's why I was so hesitant to play the game at first for the PsychoPenguin Contest, because I was unsure if I was going to make the deadline, which I missed. Looking back now, I'm kinda glad I missed it, giving me more time to play the game thoroughly and manage to write at my own pace without rushing it out.

As for the imports, I snuck in a little bit of game time for two of them, and I'm still on the fence on whether I want to review either. My impressions of the two Sega Saturn titles so far:

Mobile Suit Gundam - This was something I actually forgot existed for the longest time, originally seeing a two page spread of the game in GameFAN magazine. An action title, it has all the makings you'd expect from a product released by Bandai: heavy reliance on voice acting and cutscenes, use of ugly CGI stills, and somewhat decent play mechanics. It's alright, but since I JUST finished playing and writing a review of Wolf Fang, it just feels really generic in comparison.

Choaniki - Yeah.... I've know about the game since, like, forever, but never had a chance to actually play it until now. The game's gimmick of manly bald men in thongs quickly wears out its welcome after just four stages, and I just wanted the game to end after that. But it kept going, and going, and going.... I actually gave up because I needed to sleep. This one I might actually review, so I'm gonna be a little reserved here. Sonic 4 Episode 2 is right around the corner though, so it's a matter of how much of a mood I'm in to write one.