MOVIE REVIEW

‘A Good Day to Die Hard’: Yippee ki yawn | 1½ stars

Fifth installment is one big yippee ki yawn.

Updated: 2013-02-16T23:26:53Z

By ROGER MOORE

McClatchy-Tribune

Yeah, Happy Valentine’s Day, Mother Russia.

But it’s no “Good Day to Die Hard.”

Loud and tedious, Bruce Willis’ “Die Hard 5” is a shaky-cam/Sensuround blast of bullets and bombs, digital explosions and death-defying feats.

Not a decent villain or catchphrase in it, it’s an attempt to CIA-up the New York cop takes-on-the-world’s-terrorists franchise. And it doesn’t work.

Director John Moore (“Behind Enemy Lines”) spends an endless opening filled with no-names speaking Russian and laying out an elaborate scheme to kill or release a rich “political prisoner” (Sebastian Koch). Moore gave his cinematographer a Steadicam and a case of Red Bull and shot the whole thing with a jittery frame that doesn’t mask how dull the action beats are, and how really dull the chatty father-son bonding scenes are in between.

John McClane (Willis) is in Moscow to check up on an estranged son (Jai Courtney of “Spartacus”) who’s in jail. Turns out the son is CIA, and he’s on a mission. And Dad, who’s “on vacation,” is interfering. Or saving the day, depending on your point of view.

The kid calls the old man by his first name.

“John? Whatever happened to ‘Dad’?”

“Yeah, whatever happened to him?”

They don’t get along.

“Need a hug?”

“We’re not really a hugging family.”

They crash through an epic Moscow traffic jam — which Moore & Co. shoot and edit into a jumble of crushed cars and feeble wisecracks from the villains — “Boy, dis guy iz really gettink on my nerves.”

They get into fights with helicopters. In the middle of the city. Not that local law enforcement notices.

And it’s all in pursuit of some mysterious “file,” which the prisoner they’re trying to slip out of the country has. Or doesn’t.

Vast arsenals turn up, at their convenience. Unlimited supplies of lead are exchanged with legions of evil minions.

“It’s not 1986, you know.”

Which has kind of been a watchword these past couple of months. With “Red Dawn” remade, badly, and Stallone and Schwarzenegger stinking up cinemas in the weeks leading up to this, you kind of hoped the last ’80s action star to take his shot could conjure up a little of the old magic.

Willis, sad to say, doesn’t.

For 25 years, it’s generally been “A Good Day to Die Hard.” But these last two films have neutered the franchise and wrecked any hopes that Willis as McClane might be Bourne again. The guy can still take a licking — still pull those shards of glass out after every death- and physics-defying stunt. But the character is weary, and the “I’m on vacation” line is played.

McClane needs to trot out “I’m retired” from here on out.

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