Film review : A Good Day to Die Hard - International version (1 Viewer)

[YANG]

TITLE: A Good Day to DIE HARD - INTERNATIONAL EDITION ================================================== ========== DIRECTOR: Stars: Bruce WILLIS, Jai COURTNEY, Radivoje Bukvic, Sebastian Koch, Mary Elizabeth Winstead GUEST STARS: -- PRODUCTION STUDIO: 20th Century Fox, Dune Entertainment, Origo Film Group Distributed by: 20th Century FOX Asia MOVIE GENERE: ACTION SINGAPORE rating: PG13 without cuts(For Moderate Violence - https://app.mda.gov.sg/Classification/Search/Film/RatingInfo.aspx?sType=Feature&sRowID=AAAH4UAAPAAAD2XAAG) Possible MPAA rating: PG13 for Intense Action Widescreen Ratio: 1.85:1 Language: English + Russian, Running time: 90mins approx. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John had been on the search for his son ever since he had reunited with his daughter in LFODH, thanks to his police department intel, he now knows where his son is... in RUSSIA, with bad news, locked up for murder and will be on trial for the crime he had committed. It's a bad news. And John the "gran-pa" McCLANE, will have to fly to RUSSIA to bring his son "JACK Ginnero" back. To bring back his son, John will have to put in hard effort, in hard environment, entangle in hard actions and conspiracies, DIE HARD in foreign land! Personal VIEW- 90mins passed, so as the film ends. My mind is filled with WTF?!!! DIE HARD?!!! Should this film be renamed as "Cut the Sh*t short and PUKE HARD"?!!! As a fan of the DIEHARD series of movies, with much anticipation, i brought with me expectations to face a 2.35:1 Widescreen presentation of the movie as well as more than 120mins of screening time as well as the classic humors of sarcasm as well as bombardments of coarse Fs and MFs and other expletives. W-T-F i got, was 1.85:1 presentation of the film, 90mins of runs, and profanities "blanketed" with words that don't rhyme with the scenes and sentences!!! Well... the actions are not disappointing, but not as good and exciting as LFoDH which even if it was rated with PG13 cut, it's still intense and chair gripping. Few sarcastic humors, and that's all! Perhaps from the director's point of view, the "family reunion" is best presented with WS1.85 presentation where the camera narrows in to zoom in on the characters. ACTION? By presenting in WS1.85, the intense car chase action slam bang sequence are shot by capturing other elements that occupies more than 35% on most of the frames. Not something that follows the DIE HARD tradition...zoom in on action, complements with the slam bang sound effects. There are few visible moments that there seems to be some jump cuts...duh... of course... compares to 97mins in U.S version... Like LFoDH, there's not much blood splatters and violent scenes in GDtDH, such that the movie can score a PG13 rating in U.S as well as International screenings to attract more audience other than young adults and above. In the scene where the character JACK's partner was shot on the head during a raid, the CG effects is so obvious that looked so cartooned as LFoDH. For fans of DH tradition of violence and gores, skip this, save your money for the possible unrated video release, which i guess, may ends like LFoDH DVD release with CG Gore effects restored. Sound, as mentioned, this international version have the vocal audio tracks tempered with frequent "blankets"/re-edit voice overs of "chip head" that covers the profanities which is clearly visible on the screen! During the action sequence, the effects are clear, but not powerful to overcome the louder music tracks. Hence, if compared with LFoDH or DHWaV, the slam bang tracks will not presented with loud effects and directional bullet whizzling enjoyment even if the film is presented in discrete digital audio... I don't feel the effect blowing me off or have me grip on to my seat like the early DHs do. Michael Bay's BAD BOYS 2 is much better than GDtDH and LFoDH in loud effects and balanced in overall movie soundtrack presentation. As much as the music composer tries, there were few cues of suspense tracks where audience will find it resonates with previous DIE HARD trilogy, but where are the blending of classical musics in tradition of DHs??? Where's that "RUSSIAN mix of Symphony #9 which is present in the trailers??? Since DH4, the end credits rolls with rock n roll music? So as GDtDH??? The movie in whole, is a disappointment, but not a total disaster, saved by "cut the story short" running length to bring in more actions than telling full story. At least, a reward in the end, the family hugging tradition is back in McCLANES family again... FILM SCORE: 2.5 out of 5 Oh yeah... just to add... look out for the cheesy part where the character Komarov falls to his death in a slomo way like Gruber... does. O--M--Goodness!

 

[YANG]

Guyz... It just keep bugging me... Is it that TCF's International office casted a shadow over the Asian Region market as as hub of piracy, hence we're "accidentally" fed with such crap that upsets not me, but as well as others who had seen the film, ended with much disappointment... so that they can release the "correct version" when it comes to video release??? I'm going to tell the rest of the fans locally not to waste their money over the poorest version of the whole series. Not worth...

 

[Wayne_j]

The MPAA rating for this film is R for violence and language.

 

[YANG]

The MPAA rating for this film is R for violence and language.

Well... i guess that will be a blessing to the North American audience... It's confirmed that besides Singapore, KOREA is also having that edited International version made by FOX Asia... that sucks alot...

 

[Paul_Warren]

This got re-rated in the UK by Fox about 2 days ago (the movie comes out tomorrow!) so that its now a 12A which is children friendly. It has 4.5 swear words apparently & most of the violence is edited out or toned down. This is the same version most of Europe is getting now although some countries (Ireland is one) are getting the same adult cut as US most are getting the child friendly version after last minute editing/dubbing changes. I will wait for the home video version re-rating at the last minute is an insult to Die Hard fans & shows a lack of confidence which has been confirmed by several reviews come out of Asia are pretty brutal!!

 

[Brandon Conway]

Got my tickets for the CineramaDome for tomorrow night and looking forward to it. The excessively negative reviews have me lowering my expectations, so as long as I get an enjoyable-yet-dumb action sequel I'll be OK with it (think Rambo III), but I just hope it's not worse than that. At least the shorter runtime will help if it's not to my liking.

 

[Michael Elliott]

I went to a 10pm showing tonight and I'd rate it :star::star: out of four. However, I'd probably bring the rating down some if I wasn't so disappointed in how bad it is. I mean, the disappointment pretty much put a numb feeling on me and without this I probably really would have attacked the thing even more. I spent the weekend going through the previous four films and I actually liked all of them. I thought all of them held up incredibly well but it's clear they should have quit after four or at least did a major change on the script. I found the story involving why the father and son are in Russia to be incredibly boring. I thought the entire "pissed off son" angry at daddy was incredibly boring. There's no character development in their relationship and the predictable things just happen for no real reason. I thought the bad guys were rather bland and boring. I thought the director really didn't bring any energy or drama to ANY scene in the film. The final action scene is among the worst things I've ever seen. The CGI is so obvious and so fake looking that it really did seem like someone plugged in their Nintendo and was just playing a video game. I'm not going to ruin anything but there are several shots here that are so embarrassing and bad that I can't believe anyone would want to put their name on them. Even the opening chase sequence is just bland, poorly edited and just doesn't contain any energy. The one-liners are incredibly flat. The performances are all rather bland. This includes Willis who seems to be in his "give me a paycheck" mode.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I attended an all day DH marathon at my local Regal today which capped off with AGDTDH...I should have left after DH4. As a DH fan I cannot find the words to describe just how devastatingly sad this film was to sit through, or adequately prepare you for how let down you will feel afterward. There is nothing, not a thing, that makes a great DH film present in this 98 minute incoherent mess, zip, zero! I also can't convey to you how awful Bruce was as McClane here, for those who thought he was un-McClane in the 4th film they will embrace that version of him with open arms after seeing him in this, Bruce plays him as an almost secondary character, a shadow of himself who's only there to support his son with senseless babble that makes McClane sound like a senile old man. On top of everything else, as was pointed out, this one broke with DH tradition by being framed at 1.85:1 which felt like salt on an open wound. But, seeing the first four on the big screen again made the day more than worth the time.

 

[Michael Elliott]

^^^ I started my own marathon at home before I noticed they were showing all of them in one day or else I probably would have tried it. I'm not sure if it's true but I'm hearing rumors that there's already a sixth one coming??? I'm guessing the box office will determine this but Arnold and Sly both did better than this film in terms of quality. I don't know if this film will bomb like those but surely word of mouth is going to kill it after this weekend.

 

[schan1269]

This trend of doing movies with German/former Eastern Block money/locations will continue as long as the governments promote it. It all started back when Jason Statham and Claire Forlani were in the enormous crap movie In The Name Of the King(something like that...not bothering to look it up). Anyway, years ago, Germany started a "promote the arts" initiative that let's movie producers(and other artists) get government backed funds to shoot movies. The kicker is...if you make the movie and it fails to make money...the government gives you the money to cover your production costs. Hungary, Russia, Poland and others have joined in with that. Prior to AGDTDH, the only other big budget funded this way was that Emile Hirsch/Olivia Thirlby "invasion" movie...

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

This one's sitting at about 13 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. By contrast, Live Free or Die Hard was 81 percent fresh.

 

[Malcolm R]

I'm not sure if it's true but I'm hearing rumors that there's already a sixth one coming???

Bruce Willis has been quoted as saying he's willing to do one more "Die Hard" film after this one, then he's done. So I presume if it's financially viable, they'll make another if the main star is willing to return.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I'm almost looking forward to seeing how bad this movie turns out to be. I was on the fence, but will be checking it out tonight with some friends.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I'm really torn, on one hand, maybe because the scars are still fresh from last night, I would say let it go but on the other hand I want another one to make up for this. I'm not kidding when I say that I felt genuine despair and sadness for both the franchise and McClane while watching this, McClane acts so strangely in this one that it almost seemed like, like I said in my review, senility had started to set in, the way he spoke and acted was not like any McClane we've ever seen. The fact that he's aging is not an excuse, either, the bourdon and blame is all on the horrible script.

 

[Chuck Anstey]

I sure hope this isn't any indication of how Red 2 is going to be. I really enjoyed the first one and am looking forward to the 2nd one.

 

[TravisR]

I didn't think the movie was as quite bad as others above but it's easily the worst of the series. I've never heard of director John Moore before but I assume this is his first action movie because he seemed to have no idea how to stage action. There's a car chase near the beginning of the movie that's just awful because it's the Bruckheimer-style crap where you have a shot of an actor yelling & cut to, say, a shot of a car smashing into something, constant zooms in a failed attempt to create excitement and, most importantly, there's no sense of geography. When you have no idea where McClane, his son and the baddies are in relation to each other, it's hard to excited by the chase. I hate Monday morning directors but if I know things a director should do, how the hell does a guy who gets paid to do the job not know it as well? Despite being ridiculous and using too much slow motion, I did like the climacitc sequences (I won't spoil it for those that are going to check it out this weekend). Though Michael is right that parts of it look laughably CG. I will say that there was a decent sized crowd for a Thursday afternoon and they seemed to dig it.

 

[Patrick Sun]

John Moore has also directed: Max Payne (2008), The Omen (2006), Flight of the Phoenix (2004), Behind Enemy Lines (2001). I think he has gotten progressively worse given that line-up of films. Bummer.

 

[TravisR]

^ I've never seen any of those movies so I can't speak to them but I have to say that's a fairly high profile filmography.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I didn't see Max Payne, but the rest of that slate was just so-so. But I'll give my thoughts later tonight once I'm back from seeing this film.

 

[Brandon Conway]

The series finally derails completely in this fifth and thoroughly forgettable film. While the other sequels were a step below the original for various reasons, they each understood their main character and worked to establish a building momentum for his escalated motivation and for larger and larger action. Now we get no basis of what is going on to motivate anyone here; McClane jumps into action with almost zero motive, and nothing works whatsoever. A good day to let the series die.... period. 3/10