"A
Good Day to Die Hard," the fifth installment of the "Die Hard"
franchise is the most perfect example I've seen in a long time of the importance of establishing the
'ordinary world' in a film.
Because
it didn't.
Sure,
the film devotes a whole 22 second newscast to tell us about some vague
conflict in Russia between two rich and powerful men, and another short scene
to establish there’s an upcoming trial and some ambiguous file of ambiguous importance. But there’s no hint of a reason as to why any of this matters to
Russia, to America, or to the audience.
Why?
That’s
the question screenwriter Skip Woods should’ve been continuously asking himself
while writing this script.
