While watching the endless loop of car chases and shooting that is A Good Day to Die Hard (2013), I shared a revelation with a friend of mine who has been staying with me for some time.  I stated that as exciting as these Die Hard movies are supposed to be, they are actually boring.  The problem is story.  Maybe I am stating the obvious, but these films do not appear to care about plot.  Their purpose is to dazzle you with action and little else.  I prefer substance, and this is a function of my Catholic Faith.  That may seem like a strange position when talking about religion, but mine is one that I can physically touch and consume.  With today’s picture, without the context, the stakes are diminished and I end up caring less as to whether these people live or, er . . . die hard.  I would feel more if they were real people doing real things, but then you have the hokeyness of seeing, for example, a fall from several stories with no serious injuries for the main characters.  Thus, let us get through this last of this Bruce Willis franchise and move on with our lives.

The lives we see early in A Good Day to Die Hard are Viktor Chagarin (Sergei Kolesnikov) and Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch).  If you cannot tell by those names, we are far from familiar series settings and are in Russia.  Viktor is president of Russia (or not, who knows?) and Yuri has damaging information to the administration.  In order to keep Yuri silent, Viktor has his old comrade and friend imprisoned.  There is supposed to be some sort of trial, but Viktor is telling Yuri that the latter will not make it to the courtroom in order to reveal what he knows.  The catch here is that Viktor is offering freedom for Yuri if the incarcerated will turn over the incriminating files.  If not, it will be death.  Word of this exchange somehow reaches the United States, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) taps its local asset to intervene.  It is John “Jack” McClane Jr. (Jai Courtney), who is approached by Viktor’s men to kill Yuri.  To do so, Jack must get arrested, doing so by botching an assassination attempt.  Word of Jack’s incarceration mysteriously gets to his father, John McClane (Bruce Willis), who, being the “shoot first, ask questions later” kind of guy he is, decides to go to Moscow to help his son. Father and son have not spoken for years, and even John’s daughter, Lucy McClane (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), is worried that the combination of dad’s estrangement from Jack and John’s penchant for trouble are going to cause problems.  Yes, they do, and that is the end of my review.  Just kidding.  It does not take more than a few minutes of being stuck in Moscow traffic for John to get impatient, get out of the taxi, and walk the rest of the way to the courthouse. Standing outside, John sees Jack go into the building, but he also notices that something is amiss outside.  Seconds later, there is an explosion and in the resulting pandemonium, Jack grabs Yuri, making their way through the rubble and into a moving van Jack has parked nearby.  Before they can make their getaway, John jumps in front of the vehicle to Jack’s surprise.  As Jack sorts through his shock at seeing his dad there, to whom he has not spoken in years, the verbal altercation attracts the attention of authorities in the area.  The argument delays the escape enough to where the CIA claims that the mission has been aborted despite one of their officers being in the middle of a car chase, transporting somebody the United States government is trying to covertly extricate from the country.  There is not a lot that makes sense in this movie.  Anyway, the big car chase goes on until Jack feels bad for John, who had been following in a different stolen vehicle, and picks up dad from the side of the road.  The three make their way to a CIA safehouse run by Officer Mike Collins (Cole Hauser).  There is the stereotypical banter about how crazy of a situation everyone is in before the building is attacked by Viktor’s thugs.  Before Mike is killed, he had convinced Yuri to hand over the all-important file, but not before the Russian makes a phone call to his daughter, Irina Komarova (Yulia Snigir).  Yuri will not leave the country without Irina, and Jack and John carry on with this aspect of their new mission.  They rendezvous at an abandoned hotel, but the meeting turns into an ambush as Irina takes her father hostage and attempts to kill Jack and John.  Though they had once again cheated death, Jack is feeling like a failure until he gets a relationship mending pep-talk from John that convinces Jack to carry on with his duties.  As such, it is on to Chernobyl.  Why Chernobyl?  Because Viktor and Yuri had been secretly using the famous nuclear power plant to secretly enrich uranium for weapons before its meltdown.  Irina arrives first and takes Yuri to a vault where the file is kept.  Once they open it, and de-radiate it, Yuri turns the tables on his captors with Irina’s help.  I guess Yuri plans a coup because he is on the phone with Viktor when the president(?) is murdered by a masseuse.  Irina and Yuri are about to fly off in a helicopter with enough nuclear material to blow up the world until Jack and John show up for the requisite climactic battle.  Father and son are the last two standing, and they fly back to the United States to reunite with Lucy.

Hooray for dad getting two be with his two kids at the end of A Good Day to Die Hard, but dash if I can think of anything else to say about it, from a Catholic perspective or any other point of view.  There is somewhat of a moment that got my Catholic heart to beat an extra pump or two when Yuri says to Viktor that he is prepared to pay for his sins.  I guess this refers to trying to illegally produce nuclear weapons, and those are not something the Church cares for to say the least.  My appreciation for this attitude crumbled when Yuri turned traitor.  Further, Yuri adds that he does not care about his life.  Between saying that he is going to owe something for his mistakes and being cavalier about his death, there is little to be said about his ideas.  Life is too precious to throw away easily, no matter how hopeless your situation appears, and sin can be remediated.  Jesus paid our toll for our sins on the Cross.  This is about all there is to say about Yuri’s thoughts because they are such a discreet moment in the film.  There is another brief good when John is about to do something crazy, as usual, and comments about the absurdity of the things we do for our kids.  It is wonderful that God blesses parents with the fortitude to perform incredible feats for their offspring, so God bless him for doing so.  It is all trumped, of course, when we remember that God sent His only Son for us.

And I am willing to watch films like A Good Day to Die Hard for you in order to give you a sense of what you can expect from them.  In other words, not much.  Still, even if you have zero expectations, I would not recommend it to you.  This one is a hard pass in every conceivable manner.