“A Good Day To Die Hard” is the abysmal fifth and hopefully last entry in the once amazing “Die Hard” franchise. I can’t believe the original was such a perfect example of how to make an action picture and now we have degenerated to this point. Even the weak “Die Hard 4.0” is better than this.

In “A Good Day To Die Hard”, John McClane (Bruce Willis “Die Hard”, “The Kid”) travels to Russia in order to try and mend his relationship with his son Jack (Jai Courtney “Jack Reacher”) but then terrorists strike and John discovers his son is actually spy for the C.I.A. and after the operation goes haywire the two McClanes are the only guys left to save the day. What we get is an endless amount of dull and moronic action scenes that are about as close to reality as a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

The great joy of the earlier films (the first three I’d say) was that John McClane hated being dragged into these situations and he couldn’t believe one guy had to fight off so much stuff but this time he doesn’t even care. The character knows he is a good guy in an action film and thus he knows he can jump out of windows and smash through glass left right and centre. I really disliked the Jack character. The villains were unmemorable.

The film is a total mess from start to finish. It would work had it been a spoof because the action is so ridiculous it actually goes beyond anything I’ve seen in action film spoofs such as “Last Action Hero”. Most films don’t have the budget to be this dumb; it is a real shame because if you watch the original you’ll see smart action where the hero had to think of a plausible way to escape death and he could be seriously hurt but here the characters dive through glass and get bits of shrapnel in them and it never causes them much trouble.