A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD

year: 2013 cast: Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Cole Hauser rating: ***

“I’m on vacation,” John McClane replies (minus a particular “adjective”) after a long busy day firing machine guns, crashing a truck through a crowded freeway and surviving other dangerous situations to aid his wayward son Jack, a secret agent in Moscow hired to protect an important witness from being killed by a big bad crime syndicate.

The witness, along with a "secret file" everyone wants to get their hands on, is the plot in a nutshell, which matters little in this action-packed fifth outing of the DIE HARD franchise. Even Jack's sporadic gripes about John not being a good father are lost in the bombastic glory.

Bruce Willis has aged perfectly for the kind of character he’s become. A grizzled, experienced cop who, at first, merely tags along as his son takes charge, has more than a few tricks up his sleeve to make the risk-taking not only riskier, but he gets results.

There are a few twists – twists upon twists, actually – but these should be kept secret. Not that they add or subtract from what’s gonna happen anyway: a lot of bloody gunfights and one… or actually… two maverick Americans turning Moscow, and eventually Chernobyl, into their own bullet-ridden playground.

The nice thing is the movie isn’t very long, and though there’s not much to follow but a very basic “stay alive so you don’t get killed” template, the father/son teamup, especially Willis’s snarky tomcat with more than nine lives to spare, are fun to watch as they bond throughout the constant pandemonium.