Skip Woods

The cast is excellent, but the lack of story and weak writing make this a horrible movie. It's uncomfortable giving these actors such a low rating on a movie they made and usually I will not rate lower than three stars for quality actors, but, as explained below, two stars feels relevant here.
Disclaimer: Comments of specifics of movie follow.
The "hacking" used in the movie is not really an element / character. The theme of "misdirection" is brought in late, rarely referenced, and would be the most interesting aspect of the movie if used to drive the story. Instead, gratuitous nudity and repeated tension or shock of threatening people and/or killing people and/or violence are what is used to drive the story. Not interesting. The intent of John Travolta's character (about terrorism) he repeats ad nauseum, and it doesn't mean anything; there's no character development for that intent. The computer and hacking is also not interesting, has no depth, and is not believable. There is even a scene called "hackstasy" devoted to Hugh Jackman's character getting caught up in his hacking, complete with many colors of lighting as he moves through the room. (ugh)
— Rebecca… (mehr)

A lackluster film, and the by far worst entry in the franchise. McClane continues his road from everyman badass towards bland superhuman (which in fairness, he's been on with every new installment since the original), but the film's main issues have little to do with that.
It's chief failing is a forgettable, straight-forward plotline. On paper, it does retain the Die Hard formula (crime A is being done to hide/aid the true crime B), but it is played out in such a businesslike fashion as to render the few twists it does have rather underwhelming. The Die Hard formula is also otherwise limping in this film, as it bends the "all set in a single day" rule to allow for a (mostly unnecessary) prologue scenes and two transatlantic flights.
The humour, thankfully, is still present (perhaps more so than in the otherwise superior fourth film), and I do chuckle from the jokes here and there, though without the grounding of McClane's character in a real sense of danger and concern, his wisecracking feels more shallow. than before.
As for the new elements, putting McClane in a different country could have worked if it played up a fish-out-of-water element, putting the character on the defensive, scrambling for advantage, which is where he should be. Instead, he coolly breaks Russian laws in public with no hesitation, and the language barrier and culture differences are never really any problem at all.
His son is OK, but like so much of the film, blandly forgettable (the same goes for the villains, this in my opinion being the first in the franchise without at least one memorable baddie). This is a problem, as he's effectively the co-protagonist. The daughter was barely a plot device in the fourth film, and yet she had more personality in her few moments on screen there than her brother manages to scrounge up in an entire film here. (She does have some minor appearances here -- bland, like so much else in the film, but appreciated nonetheless for drawing on the positive memory of her character from the previous installment. Inexplicably, the "extended cut" option on the Blu-ray deletes her appearances entirely, extending instead the already way-too-long car chase sequence.)
The brother does get to shine in a few moments of banter with his dad, though -- and indeed, this is when McClane, too, has some glimmers of his former charming self. Thanks to that, what little twists there are in the bland plotting, and some relatively cool action sequences, the film is a decent enough way to spend 90 minutes. But if not for its status as the fifth entry in an otherwise quite good film series, I don't see a reason why I (or anyone else, really) would ever bother with watching this more than once.… (mehr)

The movie has many terrible sections, by all means, but the casting of Sabretooth and the chemistry between him and Wolverine is so wonderful, I have a hard time dismissing this film entirely. The bit where he lives incognito as a lumberjack is also very well done, and Reynolds manages to milk what he can out of the pre-travesty Wade Wilson moments. Combined, good bits like this go a long way towards redeeming the film's many weak moments, and while it remains the weakest in the franchise, the margin up to the other weak ones is not as big as all that.… (mehr)