DOA: "A Good Day to Die Hard"

"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.

Why is the one guy a “former” billionaire? Why is he on trial? Why is the other guy orchestrating the first guy’s trial? Why do the people of Russia care about any of this? Etc., etc…

If he’d bothered to answer even one of the many whys, we’d have had a chance at becoming invested in the story.

But that’s okay. All we really care about in a “Die Hard” flick is what our favorite sarcastic NYC detective is up to these days. So, what’s going on with his life in movie five? I’d love to tell you, but the movie gave us no clue.

From the shooting range setting and the badge we can tell he’s still on the job, but that’s it. The story doesn’t bother to establish his life status, or the current relationship between John and his son Jack -- beyond a cursory mention of an estrangement.

Then the story goes on to defy logic by having John know nothing of his son’s working for the CIA. Of course, we don’t even know that about Jack yet, because we can only guess that the “Russian” hitman who shot and killed some other unimportant and never-mentioned-again character that we saw during the credits actually IS Jack. Nonetheless, it simply isn’t believable that McClane took the time to watch over his daughter with her handsy date in movie four, yet has no IDEA that his son has been busy accomplishing all he’d need to in the military and foreign affairs (not to mention learning to speak Russian like a native!) in order to become a CIA agent.

No, we’re supposed to believe that McClane expects to find his son in a hospital or jail. For that matter, why is John even looking for his son? Has he not checked in with his mother or sister as usual? Does he have a history of disappearing and shady activity prompting this search? And why is it not surprising to McClane to find out his son is in a Russian prison of all places?

But again, Mr. Woods can’t be bothered with the whys. We get nothing but a vague mention of “my son had a lot of problems” and we’re off to the airport with daughter Lucy. And here again we’re not told why. What does McClane intend to do? Is he just planning to hold his estranged son’s hand throughout the trial, assuming his son would even let him do this? Or does he intend to break his son out of prison? Who knows.

Because we weren’t first grounded in the ordinary world -- which is when we should come to care about and root for the characters -- we have no idea of the stakes and none of the characters have any sense of purpose.

The storytelling neglect continues throughout the entire film. While significant time is devoted to mildly impressive gun battles and explosions, the scenes that should’ve developed the story and character arcs are of “first draft” quality.

In fact, the key elements that make every other “Die Hard” film fantastic are either MIA or DOA. And these elements are:

1.   “Yippee-ki-yay” -- a.k.a. McClane’s somehow self-deprecating arrogance and sardonic wit.

Instead, McClane comes off as unsure and whiney as he constantly complains that he’s “on vacation” while they’re being shot at. Which makes no sense (which is worse in my book than the fact that it wasn’t funny the first or the fourth time), because he WASN’T on vacation, he was there (we can only assume because we were never actually told) to somehow help his imprisoned son.

2.   NYC Detective John McClane is the hero

Unfortunately, Mr. Woods made McClane a sidekick in this film, as the story he developed demanded that McClane’s CIA agent son Jack be the hero. Of course, how could a “Die Hard” film NOT have John McClane as the hero? Clearly Mr. Woods struggled with this very conundrum. And he never found a solution, because the finished film sees both characters pretty passive as they react to events rather than taking action – as heroes.

3.   McClane defeats a bunch of bad guys with little more than his bare hands and a hand gun.

Boil this point down in each of the “Die Hard” films and it comes to this – McClane defeats seemingly insurmountable odds with little firepower and even fewer assets on his side... Except in “Die Hard 5” which has Jack and John easily find a trunkful of machine guns halfway through the film.

4.   It’s all about the money.

A “Die Hard” film always establishes that the bad guys have some contrived, typically political reason for their dastardly actions, but in the end all they’re really after is billions of ill-gotten dollars. And this film attempts to include this now-expected twist, but fails miserably at it. Why? Exactly. We don’t know why. Because the ordinary world wasn’t clearly established, we don’t know WHY this random file is so important. Or why this “former billionaire” is no longer rich. Or why he develops this elaborate plan to get his hands on his old stockpile of weapons-grade uranium. Or why this former billionaire’s prison breakout and the trip to get the uranium had to be tied together. (After all, he had easy access to it since he had the key and it was housed in deserted Chernobyl, so why didn’t he just claim the non-existent file was somewhere else and go pick the uranium up later?) And finally – why do John and Jack even care what this former billionaire does once they learn that the file (that the U.S. apparently wanted for some unstated reason) doesn’t exist. Are there plausible answers that could be inferred from the scant plot details we’re given? Sure. But it’s a story’s job to unfold, and this one never did. And Quite frankly, I would've done a twist on this twist and had it SEEM like it was all about getting this "former" billionaire's money all along, but in the end have it REALLY be about protecting people from the enriched uranium that was on the brink of falling into terrorist hands -- perhaps a billionaire with a heart of gold scenario that would be unexpected. 

The list of quintessential “Die Hard” elements could go on, but the point is this: This film failed where all the other “Die Hard” films succeeded (in my opinion), because it never bothered to tell a decent story.

So, as a die-hard “Die Hard” fan, I intend to pretend that film number five doesn’t exist. Hopefully, six will be back up to par, and even include Jai Courtney, who in spite of this horrific script did a fine job as Jack. And hopefully the writers of number six are smart enough to forget five, too.

Actually, if I’m hoping and wishing for things, I’d wish for a “do-over” for film five. Because the bones of this story actually did have great potential… 

But we’ll save ideas on how this film’s story could’ve been saved for another day.