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healingmirthI finally managed to watch the latest Die Hard movie. Watched it twice, actually, because I hated the opening 15 or 20 minutes so much that I felt bad and went back to give them another chance. Still pretty much hated them on second viewing.
The opening CIA/Russia scenes really didn't work for me, for this movie. For a generic spy movie or whatever, sure. But not for A Movie About John McClane, which is how Die Hard keeps rolling.
No idea how Sucre's dudes know anything about the Russian criminal justice system, or why John's reading a file written entirely in Russian. Nice scene otherwise. Amused that on "Murph"s final line, captions printed "Poppy" instead of "Papi".
Lucy! Hi, Lucy!
John McClane, apparently not freaked out by flying anymore. I woulda thought that the second movie would've made that worse, but nope!
Whoever these villains are, they're no Timothy Olyphant.
On reflection, I have two problems with the opening third of the movie. In the original, it's clearly about Holly, and a clear villain threatening her life. DH2 is such a train wreck I wouldn't bother analyzing, but at least it's instantly clear that there's villainy. DH3, we get that bit of setup about John's re-estrangement from his family, but then there's such a strong John-focused plot, it's clearly about him, it's his problem, etc. DH4, he's been assigned a task, there's a relatively clearly defined crisis, and sure, he takes on a bit much being That Guy, but at least it's all connected to Defined Villain and Defined Objective.
In DH5, he goes to a foreign country where he doesn't remotely speak the language, to, what, see his son? No clue what his actual goal his there. He fucks up an op 1) by his mere presence and then 2) by his know-it-all actions. ("Get out of the van" is what you're going with? Really?) And then he proceeds to cause I have no idea how many millions of dollars in property damage, including (Hello, my major gripe with recent Fast and Furious movies) to totally innocent bystanders. There is no way that he drove over all those cars and didn't at least send people to the hospital, at a minimum. Also, knocking out that random dude to get the second vehicle he needed to destroy said millions of dollars of shit.
And the thing that gets me the grumpiest about it is that I never got the sense that any of it was about "this is my kid; I have to save him." it was all "I'm right, I know best" all the time. And at least for me, that totally contradicts his "that guy" ethic in the previous films.
And I get that there are twists, of a sort, and we maybe don't know who's on whose side, but we're just watching the movie quietly on our couches. We're not crushing sedans in Russia, monster truck style.
I am slightly less conflicted about Jack's statement that "killing bad guys" is John's thing. It's certainly more his thing than talking competently about his feelings is, and he's pretty good at the killing bad guys thing, but I wish they'd found a way to phrase it so that his thing was surviving.
BUT THEN:
Once they get firmly into buddy-cop mode, I'm much more in favor.
Henchmen dude with the giant USSR tattoo was an acceptable substitute for the hot Italian dude in DH 4.
Alik was, as mentioned, no Timothy Olyphant, but I did enjoy most of what he did. I wish he'd been the one running anything instead of the henchman.
I could have done without the creepy vibe I got from Irina and Yuri, but they're both dead now, so whatever.
Good lord, Jack is buff.
Uh, yeah. So, I'm not mad I spent the time I watched it, and I like where they went...eventually. But I really hope they don't take that route again.
The opening CIA/Russia scenes really didn't work for me, for this movie. For a generic spy movie or whatever, sure. But not for A Movie About John McClane, which is how Die Hard keeps rolling.
No idea how Sucre's dudes know anything about the Russian criminal justice system, or why John's reading a file written entirely in Russian. Nice scene otherwise. Amused that on "Murph"s final line, captions printed "Poppy" instead of "Papi".
Lucy! Hi, Lucy!
John McClane, apparently not freaked out by flying anymore. I woulda thought that the second movie would've made that worse, but nope!
Whoever these villains are, they're no Timothy Olyphant.
On reflection, I have two problems with the opening third of the movie. In the original, it's clearly about Holly, and a clear villain threatening her life. DH2 is such a train wreck I wouldn't bother analyzing, but at least it's instantly clear that there's villainy. DH3, we get that bit of setup about John's re-estrangement from his family, but then there's such a strong John-focused plot, it's clearly about him, it's his problem, etc. DH4, he's been assigned a task, there's a relatively clearly defined crisis, and sure, he takes on a bit much being That Guy, but at least it's all connected to Defined Villain and Defined Objective.
In DH5, he goes to a foreign country where he doesn't remotely speak the language, to, what, see his son? No clue what his actual goal his there. He fucks up an op 1) by his mere presence and then 2) by his know-it-all actions. ("Get out of the van" is what you're going with? Really?) And then he proceeds to cause I have no idea how many millions of dollars in property damage, including (Hello, my major gripe with recent Fast and Furious movies) to totally innocent bystanders. There is no way that he drove over all those cars and didn't at least send people to the hospital, at a minimum. Also, knocking out that random dude to get the second vehicle he needed to destroy said millions of dollars of shit.
And the thing that gets me the grumpiest about it is that I never got the sense that any of it was about "this is my kid; I have to save him." it was all "I'm right, I know best" all the time. And at least for me, that totally contradicts his "that guy" ethic in the previous films.
And I get that there are twists, of a sort, and we maybe don't know who's on whose side, but we're just watching the movie quietly on our couches. We're not crushing sedans in Russia, monster truck style.
I am slightly less conflicted about Jack's statement that "killing bad guys" is John's thing. It's certainly more his thing than talking competently about his feelings is, and he's pretty good at the killing bad guys thing, but I wish they'd found a way to phrase it so that his thing was surviving.
BUT THEN:
Once they get firmly into buddy-cop mode, I'm much more in favor.
Henchmen dude with the giant USSR tattoo was an acceptable substitute for the hot Italian dude in DH 4.
Alik was, as mentioned, no Timothy Olyphant, but I did enjoy most of what he did. I wish he'd been the one running anything instead of the henchman.
I could have done without the creepy vibe I got from Irina and Yuri, but they're both dead now, so whatever.
Good lord, Jack is buff.
Uh, yeah. So, I'm not mad I spent the time I watched it, and I like where they went...eventually. But I really hope they don't take that route again.
