This installment of the Die Hard series sees John McClane travel to Russia to help his son who has run into trouble with the Russian authorities. I was disappointed with the movie overall--the story lacked tension and real mystery and despite a couple of plot twists it is not as compelling as any of the previous entries in the franchise. I would rank the plot at the same level as the previous movie directed by Len Wiseman. Even at 98 minutes the pacing was sluggish especially in the early going. There are several action set pieces in this film that feature lots of explosions and gunfire but I found them repetitive and boring. In fact in two key action sequences a helicopter is featured and both are similarly structured for the most part while concluding slightly differently. The obligatory automobile chase scene is filmed with shaky cam with so many cuts that last micro-seconds that its dizzying. This is unfortunate because the stunt crew do a fantastic job of destroying cars and trucks and there are genuine thrills to be had if only the editor had held shots longer. The chemistry between Willis and Jai Courtney was not there for me; you will know what I mean when you compare the brief scenes between Willis and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who scintillates in the 2 minutes she is on screen, to the rest of the film. So in the previous three months that has seen releases from Cruise, Stallone and Schwarzenegger, we now have to add an entry from Willis and to my mind here is how I would rank the films: 1. Reacher 2. The Last Stand 3. Tie Bullet to the Head and A Good Day to Die Hard
A final post script: At the screening I attended, the movie was projected digitally at an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and ALL of the subtitles were completely cut off. According to IMDb, this movie is supposed to be in 1.85:1 ratio. A 1.85:1 ratio film with subtitles when cropped to 2.35:1 would result in the the subtitles being cut off. I don't know if this was a mistake of the projectionist, who by the way tried in vain to fix the problem, or if Fox Studios decided to release the film in 2.35:1 by cropping the original 1.85:1 version. All of the dialog spoken by Russian characters with each other is in Russian and subtitled so if you can't see the subtitles you are likely missing expository dialog. My rating would be unchanged regardless.
Geek Update: The correct aspect ratio for this film is indeed 1.85:1. I went back to the multiplex and confirmed this recently when I watched a few minutes of the film again. This is the first Die Hard film that has not been shot in widescreen. It was shot on film using spherical lenses in the super-35mm format. The director apparently framed the shots for the 1.85:1 ratio (a squarer image than the 2.35:1 ratio) and extracted the image from the exposed super-35mm negative. My experience watching the film in two different aspect ratios illustrates another dissatisfying point of this movie. John Moore's framing has so much "safe-action" in the center of the screen image that even when cropped to 2.35:1, other than the loss of the subtitles there was not one single indication of the director's true intended aspect ratio! By cramming all the relevant detail into the middle of the frame, this means that there is so much irrelevant visual information in the top and the bottom of the 1.85:1 image that after these portions are cropped out there is no real loss of compositional clarity. Why would/should someone pay hard earned cash to see this on the big screen? Save your money, wait for it on cable.
A final post script: At the screening I attended, the movie was projected digitally at an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and ALL of the subtitles were completely cut off. According to IMDb, this movie is supposed to be in 1.85:1 ratio. A 1.85:1 ratio film with subtitles when cropped to 2.35:1 would result in the the subtitles being cut off. I don't know if this was a mistake of the projectionist, who by the way tried in vain to fix the problem, or if Fox Studios decided to release the film in 2.35:1 by cropping the original 1.85:1 version. All of the dialog spoken by Russian characters with each other is in Russian and subtitled so if you can't see the subtitles you are likely missing expository dialog. My rating would be unchanged regardless.
Geek Update: The correct aspect ratio for this film is indeed 1.85:1. I went back to the multiplex and confirmed this recently when I watched a few minutes of the film again. This is the first Die Hard film that has not been shot in widescreen. It was shot on film using spherical lenses in the super-35mm format. The director apparently framed the shots for the 1.85:1 ratio (a squarer image than the 2.35:1 ratio) and extracted the image from the exposed super-35mm negative. My experience watching the film in two different aspect ratios illustrates another dissatisfying point of this movie. John Moore's framing has so much "safe-action" in the center of the screen image that even when cropped to 2.35:1, other than the loss of the subtitles there was not one single indication of the director's true intended aspect ratio! By cramming all the relevant detail into the middle of the frame, this means that there is so much irrelevant visual information in the top and the bottom of the 1.85:1 image that after these portions are cropped out there is no real loss of compositional clarity. Why would/should someone pay hard earned cash to see this on the big screen? Save your money, wait for it on cable.