As we all know, Die Hard 5 didn't work as a Die Hard movie. It did not even work particularly well as a simple action movie. But what went wrong? Here is my opinion.

It had a miniscule, boring plot with no surprises.

Seriously, it had only one twist, and that was executed so poorly, I did not even bat an eyelash at it. The plot moved from A to B which in better films means that it stayed focused and did not introduce useless subplots, but here, the whole ordeal came off as boring, since every other aspect of the film was so horribly flawed, that it directed your attention to the nonexistent plot.

It did not have exciting action scenes.

At the beginning, the car chase was nothing special (the camera work was especially horrendous). At the middle, none of the shootouts were special. At the end, there was only one thing that made me go "well, this was a good idea" (more on this later), but nothing else was special. The heart of the film should have been these amazing scenes of chases, hand to hand combat, shootouts... but the movie failed miserably at this department too.

The "family drama" aspect of the movie was cringe-worthy.

The exchanges between McClane and his son on how McClane was not a good father because he always worked? The idea is older than dirt, it doesn't work with the McClane character, and the delivery of these lines was so godawful that this aspect hurt the movie so bad, I almost walked out of the theater. Ah, and the ending...? But more on that later.

It doesn't feel like a Die Hard film, the McClane character was completely omitted.

This is not McClane. There was no McClane in this film. *The very idea of the McClane character is that in the heat of combat, in a tense situation, he always comes up with a clever idea on how to use his surrounding environment to outwit the bad guys. * He had these moments all throughout DH1-4 (yes, even in 4 he had these). Here, in Die Hard 5? We get to witness 1 such idea. ONE (when he released the truck in the helicopter to screw with its balance). And even that one is not that good, compared to the others in previous films. Scenes like these are iconic. In this movie however, McClane did nothing noteworthy. They did not give him a tough baddie to defeat one on one. They did not give him any chance to demonstrate his iconic quick wits. Conclusion: McClane was not present during the events of this movie.

Lack of an exciting ending.

The coup de grace for the movie was the ending. At first, I didn't even know what the russian chick was trying to do by driving the copter straight into the building. And then they jump away, and... the end? Oh, it's not the end yet, but... what is this? The final sequence (the meeting at the airport) is so out-of-place and out-of-character for everyone involved, that it seriously hurt watching it. So on top of all mentioned problems, the movie goes out not with a bang, but a whimper. How fitting...

Agree? Disagree? Let's discuss :-)