Movie Review: ‘A Good Day to Die Hard’

What the Hell is going on? Who’s in what car? Which one is the bad guy? These are the questions that arose during the first fifteen minutes of A Good Day to Die Hard‘s car chase. That the action confuses more than excites is a bad, bad sign.

The movie opens in a Russian prison where billionaire Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch) is awaiting trial for…um…potentially snitching out the bigwig Chagarin (Sergei Kolesnikov). From the outset, it’s not clear who is actually the bad guy — Chagarin explodes when Komarov refuses to give him a certain file, so maybe he’s the bad guy, but then Komarov is a billionaire — and one who plays chess in prison at that — doesn’t that automatically mark him as the bad guy?

But then we switch to a night club, where Jack (Jai Courtney) assassinates Anton (Roman Luknar). Is Jack the bad guy then? Apparently not, since we’re now in America, where John McClane (Bruce Willis) is at the airport, heading to Russia to bail out Jack, who’s his son. Evidently Jack works for the CIA, which now condones public killings.