Lots of people are complaining that this movie has no plot. I disagree a little bit with this. There’s a plot in there, it just seems to have very little with John McClane. It’s mostly about the son, Jack McClane, and whatever weird CIA work he’s been doing with Russian criminals. For at least the first third of the movie, we barely see Bruce Willis’ smirking visage. When we do see him, he doesn’t have a whole lot to do. There’s literally a 10-minute or so sequence where he’s running around this Moscow street yelling “Jack!” over and over. And over. Meanwhile the son’s off doing something we don’t care about. Helping some dude escape from some thing or whatever.
It’s unclear whether they did this because they really thought the Jack story was supremely interesting and that John McClane is overrated or whether they’re priming this Jai Courtney guy to take over the franchise. I’m guessing the former is true, because they didn’t give Courtney a whole lot to do either. But it felt for much of the movie that Jack was leading things and his old man was just following him around with one huge weapon after another. It’d be like having a movie where James Bond does nothing but follow a Bond girl around and shoot things.
Continue reading on the next page…
