Less John McClane than James Bond, the fifth installment in the iconic Die Hard franchise puts our favorite maverick cop where he’s never been before: overseas and on his heels. Twenty-five years after he single-handedly foiled a sophisticated, well-financed robbery at Nakatomi Plaza—as well as rescued his estranged wife from the ruthless perpetrators—John (a grizzled Bruce Willis) travels to Moscow with much the same mission: Little Jack McClane (now big Jai Courtney) has landed himself in prison half a world away, and Dad travels there to bring him home—without backup or much of a plan.
It turns out that Jack doesn’t need his father’s help, and in fact John manages to screw things up royally for his son—Jack isn’t a criminal at all but a CIA operative undercover on a mission to extract political prisoner Komarov (Sebastian Koch). As a result, John finds himself in an unfamiliar situation—out of his element and not in control. When the pair’s paths first intersect, John is standing in the middle of the street with his hands in the air, and his grasp of events doesn’t get much better as he plays catch-up in a culture and scenario outside of his wheelhouse.
Throughout, director John Moore and screenwriter Skip Woods pay homage to the character and series. John’s signature phrase, “Yippee kai yay, motherfucker!” occurs right on cue at the climax of the action. (And this time it’s not truncated as it was in the PG-13-ratedLive Free or Die Hard—we’re fully back in R territory here.) There are also falling glass and a villain flung off a building (nods to the original film), kids who refuse to call him “Dad” (as in the fourth movie) and loved ones in peril (episodes one, two and four). John McClane may be a dirtbag of a husband and father, but he’s at heart a family man.