4. John Moore's Direction
The second that John Moore was announced to be directing A Good Day to Die Hard, my heart instantly sank; the guy's track record to date is, to be kind, not good, including Behind Enemy Lines, the Flight of the Phoenix and The Omen remakes, and the dreadful adaptation of the Max Payne video game. It's difficult to imagine why Fox landed on such an unreliable choice, other than perhaps thinking that he was a director who they could easily control. Though an opening car chase certainly has promise, Moore's slapdash direction largely ruins it, because he never lingers on anything long enough for us to just enjoy it. Instead, it's all fast zooms, choppy editing, shaky cam and angles that pull in too close for us to make spatial sense of what's going on. Trying to keep track of which car is where is a headache-inducing experience, and the only moments that really work are those that blatantly reference the previous films in the series. This is the first film in the series that truly feels anonymous in the way that it is directed.