Almost a month ago I was able to witness something that I doubt I’d ever think I’d say again. An enjoyable Arnold Schwarzenegger film with The Last Stand. While I ended up skipping out on the Sylvester Stallone feature that was the metaphoric link between that and the return of John McClane to the big screen I’m willing to say that the recent trend of older action stars lighting up the big screen with tried and proven entertainment seemed to be overall working. Then I saw A Good Day to Die Hard.

The return for John McClane (Bruce Willis) has him travelling to Russia in order to find his wayward son, Jack (Jai Courtney), who he believes to be in trouble with the legal system. Upon reaching the courthouse (literally not a minute after John steps out of a taxi) the film begins the “bad things happen where McClane’s are” scenario and John eventually discovers that Jack is actually an undercover CIA agent on a mission. So begins the father and son blowing shit up business of this movie.

While many may read that the title of this movie says “Die Hard” and reading the above synopsis sounds like more than enough to equate a good movie (in the vain we hope) that would make you incorrect completely. The film is a total wash of anything enjoyable in any sort of way.

While the Die Hard franchise hasn’t ever really been about riveting police work or the greatest criminals plans it rests its coat jacket of awesome on the fact that we get to see John McClane on the brink of death with nothing more than a handgun and toothpick (until he gets a machine gun) going from bad to worse as he keeps surviving encounter after encounter with the baddies. It’s not until the moment we finally see McClane get the big boss that he isn’t clinging for survival because he didn’t expect this insanity. With A Good Day to Die Hard that isn’t true. Luckily placed hardware — a Mercedes Jeep that can defeat all cars and terrain,  a big ass gun that he can use to shoot a series of bad guys who all happen to be walking into his line of fire one after another, a maniacal crazy guy decides to dance rather than shoot, and he happens to have a spy for a partner/son this time around to help.

The biggest failing any action film can have is not just having mediocre action (which this film has in spades) but not being able to manage it’s time properly. Whenever we’re given a moment to pause before the next big set piece and we actually have to spend time with these characters it feels forced. There is some of that good John McClane wit that we love — insert more cowboy jokes and about how Jack is a baby to John — but it almost feels like a stark copy and paste into a moment that it doesn’t belong. As if someone already wrote a bad action movie and then the studio remembered that Die Hard existed and asked them to make it into a Die Hard movie.

Part of me wants to believe that Bruce Willis agreed to do Live Free or Die Hard (a film I think is fun at it’s core) because he thought that it’d be fun to be McClane again after a twelve year hiatus from the franchise. I also want to believe that he did A Good Day to Die Hard so that the franchise would die and he’d stop being asked to make Die Hard movies.