Millions. I’m presuming, are about to see A Good Day to Die Hard. Perhaps waiting in long lines in Manhattan as we speak. Overheard: “I don’t care how shitty this latest installment may be — I have to see it anyway.” For Joe Popcorn quality is not the thing — it’s the return of a comfort brand. Any New Yorker with any kind of investment in seeing good movies or who knows or cares anything about the world in he/she lives will pay to see No this weekend.
Marshall Fine found a moment of clarity in his review:
“By the point Bruce Willis’s John McClane gets to this fifth outing, he’s like Roger Moore in one of those early 1980s James Bond abominations, like Octopussy or For Your Eyes Only: carried along by the conventions of the form and commenting on them, rather than simply being part of them. Suddenly he’s a guy who goes looking for people to kill, instead of fighting for his life.”