February 16, 2013
Why should anyone who appreciates history go see A Good Day to Die Hard, episode 5 of
Bruce Willis’ Die Hard series? Well,
if they are a history purist or a fan of realism, they shouldn’t. If they’re
not willing to suspend disbelief…even for a couple of hours…they should avoid
this film as if were a communicable disease. But if you are someone who enjoyed
the 1980s, you should drop everything and streak to the theaters…that’s not to
say you should drop your clothes and streak, that’s a fad from the 1970s. No, I
mean to say that you should drive or walk to a theater to see A Good Day to Die Hard.
“Why?” you might ask. Well, to put it simply, this is a big
budget action extravaganza like they made in the 1980s. It’s original Die Hard on steroids (another thing we
heard a lot about in the 1980s). And the filmmakers do a good job of reminding
us about the “Decade of Excess” by referencing the year 1986, President Reagan,
Mikhail Gorbachev and having a great deal of the story take place at Chernobyl.
The action starts almost as soon as John McClane (Bruce
Willis) arrives in Moscow and continues without much interruption through to
the climax of the film. A prolonged car chase rips through the Moscow streets
and adds a few interesting twists to the overplayed concept by having McClane
drive his stolen vehicle off a bridge, down a car carrier, over the roofs of
vehicles and across a median to arrive in the proper lane to pursue the bad
guys…if you enjoy stunts, it was pretty cool. Other sequences have McClane and
his son (played by Jai Courtney) dodge countless bullets, fall through numerous
floors and scaffolding, and leap from helicopters to avoid death and bring down
the baddies. They face nuclear radiation head on without wearing protective
suits (not unlike what Indy did when he hid in a fridge during a nuclear blast
in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the
Crystal Skull) and come out of it unfazed. Make no mistake…these guys are
superheroes without the capes, cool nicknames or copyright claims of Marvel or
DC Comics.
Now back to the history purist and the fan of realistic
entertainment…A Good Day to Die Hard
gives you a lot to thumb your nose at. Obviously, father and son McClane could
never do in real life what is depicted in “reel life”. And how is it that
average cop John McClane always finds himself in high-stakes contests with
international terrorists? I know a lot of cops and none of them have had a
single run-in with an international terrorist, let alone five run-ins that
involve the kind of weaponry that only the highest brass at the Pentagon know
about. And the film’s account of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster is, of course,
highly inaccurate.
But if you went to the theater and paid your $10 plus to see
A Good Day to Die Hard, you didn’t go
to see realistic scenarios or historical accuracy. You went to watch good
old-fashioned (are the 1980s considered old fashioned?) action. You weren’t
there to be intellectually challenged, you wanted to be visually stimulated by
the biggest explosions and amused by repetitive catch phrases (I forgot to
count how many times John McClane said he was on vacation). Ignoring the latest
weapon gadgetry and the characters’ cell phones, A Good Day to Die Hard is a film that would have fit right in with
1980s cinema. And I for one am glad to see it back on our screens…especially
since audiences seem to have ignored Arnold’s The Last Stand and Stallone’s A
Bullet to the Head.
I loved the 1980s and would like nothing more than to see
the action heroes of yesterday take the place of the comic book heroes of
today. Then again, that’s just me. Are there any other fans of Rad Flicks out
there?
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