SCORE: 2.5 / 10
This movie fall beyond my expectations. In one sentence, it's just not good in every way except for Bruce Willis himself. Otherwise, everything else is just not satisfactory enough. A potential candidate for the worst action blockbuster movie of the year, sadly.
The only positive thing I can find is really, Bruce Willis, himself. Given the brilliance of its predecessors, this movie is a free fall in the series. The story is rather boring, the villains are not cool, intimidating, or even threatening, the humor is bad (other than Willis'), the duration is short, the action is dull, and just pretty much everything you don't see coming from a 'Die Hard' movie.
Looking back at the previous two movies, the villains in Jeremy Irons' and Timothy Olyphant's character had total control. In the third movie, Jeremy Irons' character had McClane (Willis) running around as if being played with, while he simultaneously went on with his plan, leaving McClane with little hope of victory. Same goes for the fourth movie, where Olyphant's character had all the cyber technology to play around with the traffic, the streets (remember the one in the tunnel, very spectacular scene), etc, and just had total control from his base. In the fifth movie however, there was no intimidation from the villain, and no threat compared to the previous two, and the movie was all about shooting, bombing, wrecking, explosions, crashes, but no sense of complexity at all. Very dull indeed. And the fact that the villain was Russian makes it too mainstream.
And Jai Courtney's character as John McClane's son is utter nonsense. The way he called his dad by name is just rubbish. No character can boss around Willis' character and I just felt disgusted with the way he seem to have done that. The character was a failure to portray a proper John McClane son. And then there is the bad humor. All the humor on the movie was forced upon and didn't seem funny, except when it came from Willis himself. There was also this issue with the shaky handheld camera throughout, it was very annoying. Topped with some boring and predictable story, very dull action sequences (only full of shooting and wrecking), and an un-creative plot & no lively characters at all, this movie just ruined my expectations, and is very much a potential candidate for the worst action blockbuster movie.
I was going to mention the very short duration, but given the quality of the movie, that may turn out to be positive after all. Honestly, it was all Bruce Willis that had made the movie watchable. His performance was great and he really gave it his all, even when the remaining cast failed. If I were Willis, I would have rejected had I seen the script would be this bad. Nevertheless, it was probably his devotion to the series, and it will probably because of him if the movie managed to earn some success in revenue.
