The original Die Hard is indisputably one of the greatest action movies ever made. It placed an ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation, using all of his wiles as a police officer to save his wife and others being held hostage in a skyscraper by Eurotrash terrorists. It was brilliantly executed by director John McTiernan, and made stars out of the relatively unknown Alan Rickman and TV heartthrob Bruce Willis.

Of course, the film’s success bred a series of sequels with the second film basically aping the plot of the first, but putting Mrs. McClane on a plane, then transplanting John McClane to New York in the third film, and Baltimore/D.C. in the fourth. While each film was a financial success, they strayed from the original concept and turned McClane into a superman who could withstand any amount of pain and injury to take down the bad guys while the effects crews got to plan and execute bigger and bigger action sequences.

Which brings us to A Good Day to Die Hard.

I honestly don’t remember if John McClane Jr. (or Jack, as he calls himself due to his prickly relationship with his father) was ever mentioned in any of the previous movies*, but we do get a brief appearance from Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Lucy McClane (from Live Free or Die Hard) at the beginning and end of the fifth installment of the series. John Sr. is alerted to the fact that Junior has gotten himself in a whole heap of trouble in Russia, is about to be put on trial for murder, and will probably serve a life sentence in prison. Naturally, dad hops on the first flight to Moscow and finds himself in the middle of a plot that his son, who actually works for the CIA, was part of. Jack was attempting to extricate another prisoner who has a file that they don’t want to fall into enemy hands (and we really have no idea what information this file contains). Of course, the bad guys show up to make sure they get the prisoner and the file, but McClane’s arrival throws the CIA operation off by five minutes … enough time to put them all in danger.

Of course, this plot is merely the slimmest of excuses to get the action rolling, and the film basically becomes one major action/effects showcase after another until the twist stops everything for a minute, and then it’s back to the action. Big, grand, utterly ridiculous, crowd-pleasing action. Willis’ McClane gets tumbled down a highway in a truck, shot at by a helicopter (dodging the ammo reminded me of the scene in the original Star Wars where C-3PO and R2-D2 managed to avoid all of the laser fire in the corridor), plummets through plate glass windows, and dangles off of the hood of a military vehicle … that’s also dangling out of the back of a helicopter … with almost nary a scratch (he does get some blood on his head at one point, but it was probably from someone else). At this point in the franchise’s history, John McClane has officially become Wile E. Coyote. Jack (Jai Courtney) is almost as indestructible. The nameless bad guys … not so lucky.

By the time screenwriter Skip Woods pulls the rug out from under all of us, you’re either going to think the twist was a clever move or just be pissed off that you (and the McClanes) invested so much time in thinking they were doing what they thought was the right thing. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good plot twist but when the film’s plot is basically two sentences that are used only to set up the action, I just call that lazy writing (and if I had to hear McClane whine, “I’m on vacation,” one more time I was going to throw my popcorn at the screen).

When all is said and done, A Good Day to Die Hard is a terrific showcase for the stunt coordinators and their teams, as well as the CGI artists involved in creating those action sequences. Jai Courtney also makes his mark as a new action hero and could certainly carry the franchise for a few more films. Willis, however, seemed to be sleepwalking through the movie (or was it utter disbelief at what was going on?) and just barely muttered his iconic catchphrase, more out of resignation than anything else. But … my screening audience loved it, applauding as the credits rolled and chanting “McClane, McClane, McClane!” Seriously, they did that. It’s sad to see that a great action film series like Die Hard has become a cartoon that even its star doesn’t seem very invested in, but the studio knows how to please the masses. Unless this tanks as badly as returning action heroes Schwarzenegger’s and Stallone’s new films have (and don’t think the studio isn’t sweating bullets about those failures), we will probably be treated to more of the same mindless, plotless action scenes pretending to be a movie with the name Die Hard wedged into it. If nothing else, they did get to go back to an R rating.

*According to IMDB, Jack has been referenced as far back as the original movie, but this is his first flesh-and-blood appearance in the series.

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I was psyched to see Looper, the new time travel film starring Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt and a version of Joseph Gordon-Levitt that’s supposed to look like Bruce Willis. Yes, it’s sci-fi, which is not my genre of choice, but it seemed like accessible sci-fi; basically an action movie with some other-worldly elements thrown in. The year is 2044. As Joe (Gordon-Levitt) explains, time travel hasn’t been invented yet — but it will be thirty years from now. Like many things that are awesome, it’s highly illegal, though, so it’s only used by the top-tier criminal organizations. Joe works as a Looper, and his  job in 2044 is to wait in a Kansas field and shoot people that the crime family wants to be rid of. He then disposes of the future body in the past, thus creating the perfect crime.

For Joe, the problem arises when a new boss, called “The Rainmaker,” comes onto the scene in the future and decides to “close the Loops,” meaning he sends the future version of the Loopers back for their younger versions to kill. Once this is done, the Loopers receive a large payoff and embark on the last thirty years of their lives. At least, that’s what’s supposed to happen. Unfortunately, sometimes the future Loopers make themselves known to their younger versions, creating a situation in which they are both existing in the same time. This is what happens with Joe, as Old Joe (Willis) comes back to desperately try to change the future.

Looper starts out as a fast, fun, bloody sci-fi action movie. For the first hour or so, I was completely on board. Hell, the first twenty minutes was made entertaining enough just by trying to guess how many seasons of Moonlighting Gordon-Levitt watched in order to nail Willis’s facial expressions. After you get used to that and his prosthetic Bruce Willis nose, it’s easy to settle into a film that features action and comedy in almost equal measures, with just the smallest dash of sci-fi thrown in.

In fact, time travel is really just a MacGuffin in this film. One of the best scenes takes place between Joe and Old Joe, in which Joe is naturally trying to ask his older self about how time travel works. Old Joe blows him off saying that it doesn’t matter, and if they started to delve into it, they’d be there all day making diagrams with straws. Willis may as well be talking to the audience there, because the message is clear: time travel is merely a plot device, so don’t think about it too much, nerds.

It is this dismissal that may turn some hardcore sci-fi fans off, but speaking as someone who generally glazes over when a TV show or film delves too deeply into explaining the more fantastical aspects of the plot (I’m looking at you, JJ Abrams), I appreciated it. The idea of present actions having future consequences still plays a major role in Looper, but the focus is on the action, not the scientific implications.

Then, halfway through, Looper becomes a lot less fun.

Let me preface this by saying my reaction to the second half of Looper isn’t necessarily indicitive of the reaction the majority of people will have. Looper made me cry. It probably will not make you cry. You will probably continue to enjoy it. I don’t want to get too spoilery here, but part of Old Joe’s quest involves children — and he’s not starting a softball team. There’s one scene in particular, in which I legitimately turned to my boyfriend, made this face:

And said, “Wait. They are not even … right?” He just sadly nodded at me. I then spent the rest of the film in full-on Tracy Morgan mode:

Yes, the fact that I’m a mother to a little boy who’s turning four on Saturday definitely affects my judgment of the second half of this film. However, I can also look beyond my own personal reaction and make (mostly) objective observations about the turn Looper takes.

There is a message about parental love in this film that is beautiful. Emily Blunt is fantastic as Sara, an emotionally-damaged mother trying to make a good life for her young son Cid (played by a scene-stealing Pierce Gagnon). The scenes between Joe, Sara and Cid are the ones that provide the real heart in the film and make the ending both moving and incredibly powerful.

With that said, the tone of the second half of the film completely changes from the first. While this in and of itself wouldn’t be a bad thing (after all, who doesn’t love a film that completely changes its audience’s expectations?), the problem arises when, instead of a clear directional shift, the film’s waters just become muddied.

Instead of taking a fun action movie and making it dark and disturbing, Looper instead tries to be a fun action movie with a smattering of absolutely horrifying scenes mixed in. A scene that made me cry, for instance, was followed by one of Bruce Willis doing his best John McClane in a scene that had people in my packed theater cheering.

Rian Johnson is an amazingly talented writer/director, and is responsible for making audiences believe that Gordon-Levitt could be more than a sitcom star. Like Brick before it, Looper is innovative and exciting. However, the directional shift went just a little bit too far and severely impacted my enjoyment of the film. Watching the second half of Looper jump back and forth from light to dark made it seem as though Johnson approached it from a clinical angle, with all violence being created equal. While this could have been a statement in itself, it felt more like indifference.

Johnson asks some big philisophical questions in Looper and gives tough answers. Unfortunately, the ham-handedness with which some of the issues are handled do the film a disservice. Looper is still absolutely worth seeing and full of fantastic performances, but just make sure you brace yourself for the second half.

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