Gorky Park (1983) - Cool Hurt investigates murders in Apted's fine Cold War Moscow thriller

♥♥♥♥

A simple, elegant poster for Michael Apted's Gorky Park

Three dead bodies are found the snow of Moscow's Gorky Park with their faces peeled off. The city's most successful cop smells KGB on the case, but his investigation also points him towards an American.

Gorky Park is written by Dennis Potter (Tender Is the Night (1985, miniseries)), based on the same-titled 1981 novel by Martin Cruz Smith (The Indians Won (1970)), and directed by Michael Apted (The Triple Echo (1972)).
It is a great proponent of a crime thriller with plenty of local color colors. The film also gives its audience a feeling of the repression the people suffered under in the USSR.
William Hurt (Syriana (2005)) is excellent as our cop protagonist; Lee Marvin (The Killers (1964)) doesn't seem to actually act much, but he's there and it works. Also in the solid cast; Ian McDiarmid (Spooks (2004, TV-series)) as a morbid coroner.
Gorky Park is a cold-looking place and its score (by James Horner (Avatar (2009))) is very much of its time. But the film is full of suspense and action, and it has a showdown in Stockholm.

Watch a 4-minute scene from the film with Hurt and Marvin here

Cost: 6.5 mil. $
Box office: 15.8 mil. $ (North America alone)
= Uncertain - but at least a box office success (returned 2.43 times its cost in North America alone)
[Gorky Park was released 16 December (USA) and runs 123 minutes. Shooting took place in Glasgow, Scotland, Helsinki, Finland, Stockholm, Sweden and in Moscow, then the USSR, from February - May 1983. Helsinki stood in for Moscow for most of the film, as the crew were denied permits to shoot there. The film opened #13 to a 1.2 mil. $ first weekend in 629 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #5, behind holdover hits Terms of Endearment, Silkwood, new release Reckless and holdover hit Never Cry Wolf. The film's international gross numbers are regrettably not available. If it made a realistic 20-30 mil. $ worldwide it would rank as either a box office success or a big hit. It was nominated for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5/4 star review, translating to a notch higher than this one. Apted returned with Firstborn (1984). Hurt returned in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985); Marvin in Dog Day (1984). Gorky Park is fresh at 75 % with a 6.53/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Gorky Park?

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013) - Willis' action-franchise dies an ugly death

♥

+ Worst Poster of the Year + Stupidest Movie of the Year

Die-hard cop John McClane from New York partners up with the son he (suddenly) has, in Moscow, where uranium and nuclear warheads are falling into the wrong hands.

A Good Day to Die Hard, the 5th film in the Die Hard action movie series, is an awful film through and through. It makes Die Hard 2 (1990) - the series' low-point until now, - seem like a world class film. For a series of movies with as high a standard as the Die Hard movies; Die Hard (1988) is an action masterpiece, and both Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995) and Die Hard 4.0 (2007) are excellent movies, - it is a little painful to see it all come to this:
Die Hard 5 has no good villain, (which is pivotal), and only one other name-actor besides Bruce Willis (Pulp Fiction (1994)) as McClane, and that is up-and-comer Jai Courtney (Jack Reacher (2012)), (not counting Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Death Proof (2007)), because she only reappears very shortly as McClane's daughter.) Courtney and Willis have absolutely no on-screen chemistry and seem in fact to loathe each other. Their scenes together are so bad.
The script is also bonkers; confident that it can do the impossible, when it wants the audience to follow McClane through idiotic, overly huge and stupid action scenes and then go straight into weirdly emotional bonding scenes between Willis and his gorilla-like son. It is also furnished with cliché upon cliché, and seemingly build on thin air - nothing! The responsible writer is Skip Woods (X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)).
A Good Day to Die Hard even has an extremely ugly CGI-finale. - Ugh!
Nevertheless, Willis wants to make a 6th Die Hard film before retiring the franchise, and a writer has been commissioned to write this under the dubious title Die Hardest. - After A Good Day to Die Hard, I am intensely skeptical.
It is directed by Irish action director John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines (2001)).

Related posts:

John Moore: 2013 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED VI]

2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]  
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Behind Enemy Lines (2001) - Solid action/war/suspense popcorn entertainer

Even the posters for John Moore's A Good Day to Die Hard are ugly and unoriginal, - especially this one, for which A Good Day to Die Hard wins the Worst Poster of the Year award from Film Excess - congratulations!

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 92 mil. $
Box office: 304.6 mil. $
= Box office success
[Distributor Fox did the smart thing of opening Die Hard 5 in Asia a week before the wide American release. There, mass audiences rarely object if a huge movie is terrible. Despite opening 1st in the US, the film's main arena was the rest of the world, where it made an impressive 237.3 mil. $ or 77 % of its total gross.]

What do you think of A Good Day to Die Hard?
Are you interested in another, perhaps last film in the series?