{"id":34139,"date":"2013-02-18T10:35:43","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T17:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/?p=34139"},"modified":"2013-02-25T08:25:03","modified_gmt":"2013-02-25T15:25:03","slug":"rethink-reviews-a-good-day-to-die-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/2013\/02\/18\/rethink-reviews-a-good-day-to-die-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"ReThink Review: A Good Day to Die Hard"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"inline-playlist playlist\" title=\"\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/download\/DieHardKPFK12\/Die%20Hard%20KPFK_1-2.mp3\">Listen to this segment <\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n<p><a href =\"http:\/\/www.rethinkreviews.net\"><img decoding=\"async\" align=right width=55% src=\"\/home\/graphics\/rethink_reviews_small.jpg\" alt=\"Rethink Reviews\" \/><\/a><strong>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. <\/strong>  <\/p>\n<p><em>Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. <\/em>  <\/p>\n<p> Read his reviews online at <a href=\"http:\/\/ReThinkReviews.net\">ReThinkReviews.net<\/a>. Watch his videos at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim\">www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim<\/a>, and follow him on Twitter at <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews\">twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews<\/a>. ReThink Reviews&#8217; theme song is by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/restaurantmusic\">Restavrant<\/a>.    <\/p>\n<p><strong>A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The original 1988 \u2018Die Hard\u2019 is one of my favorite movies of all time, and is in my opinion, nearly a perfect film. One of the reasons I love it so much is that it changed the action genre, not only by popularizing the incredibly intelligent villain who outsmarts nearly everyone (in the form of Alan Rickman\u2019s Hans Gruber), but by rooting itself firmly in reality. \u2018Die Hard\u2019\u2019s hero wasn\u2019t a Stallone- or Schwarzenegger-esque indestructible, musclebound freak, but Bruce Willis\u2019 everyman New York cop John McClane, a guy with a struggling marriage, a rebellious streak, and a dark sense of humor who not only displays fear, but gets increasingly injured as the film progresses. But all the things that made \u2018Die Hard\u2019 so compelling and groundbreaking 25 years ago have not just been abandoned, but aggressively rejected over the course of four sequels, hopefully ending with the fifth ridiculous installment, \u2018A Good Day to Die Hard\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>In this edition, McClane travels to Russia to help his estranged son, Jack (played by Jai Courtney), who\u2019s been arrested for murdering a Russian official. But unbeknownst to John, Jack is actually an undercover CIA agent trying to help a Russian political prisoner named Kamorov (played by Sebastian Koch) who knows the location of a mysterious file that could incriminate corrupt officials and may have something to do with nuclear secrets. Jack begrudgingly joins forces with John as they rampage across Russia, miraculously surviving everything thrown at them as they pursue and are pursued by Russian bad guys.<\/p>\n<p>The makers of the original \u2018Die Hard\u2019 were so set on emphasizing McClane\u2019s vulnerability that they made the brilliant decision to have him not even wear shoes for almost the entire movie. Yet now, in his late 50s, McClane has somehow become more indestructible than Willis\u2019 superhero character in \u2018Unbreakable\u2019, able to survive enormous car crashes, crazy gunfights, and multiple leaps off buildings with hardly a scratch, totally robbing \u2018A Good Day to Die Hard\u2019 of any sense of danger or even reality. The wonderfully acted, even touching regrets McClane feels towards his wife and their failing marriage in \u2018Die Hard\u2019 have been replaced by the laughably inauthentic rift between McClane and Jack as they try to hash out what a bad dad McClane was between hails of gunfire.   <\/p>\n<p>While the underrated \u2018Die Hard 2\u2019 found humor in the improbability of McClane disrupting two terrorist schemes in his lifetime, the fifth installment has not a shred of irony or self awareness, instead trying to shoehorn laughs by having McClane repeatedly shout, \u201cI\u2019m on vacation!\u201d which, by the way, he isn\u2019t since he went to Russia to get his son out of jail. And while it\u2019s a \u2018Die Hard\u2019 tradition to have there be a twist to the villains\u2019 plans, it\u2019s hard to understand or even give a damn about who these largely faceless bad guys are and what they\u2019re up to.<\/p>\n<p>You might say that it\u2019s unfair or pointless to judge \u2018A Good Day to Die Hard\u2019 against a classic that came out almost 25 years ago. But why wouldn\u2019t you if the movie still has \u2018Die Hard\u2019 in the title and stars the same actor playing the same character? The only reason not to compare the fifth installment to the original is the fact that the original \u2018Die Hard\u2019 is so undeniably superior on every conceivable level, which only emphasizes the fact that the sole reason to make this sequel that doesn\u2019t advance a story or improve on anything is solely to make money peddling a shoddy knock-off to a largely international audience. So please, instead of wasting your time and money on garbage like \u2018A Good Day to Die Hard\u2019, do yourself a favor and just rewatch the original so you can marvel at what a truly wonderful movie it is and how well it holds up after all these years, while trying your best to forget that the last three \u2018Die Hard\u2019 sequels, especially \u2018A Good Day to Die Hard\u2019, ever happened.  <\/p>\n<p>\u2018A Good Day to Die Hard\u2019 is rated R and is in theaters now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rethink-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}