When I first saw the thumbnail for the trailer to this flick, I clicked on it thinking it was going to be a comedy. Because Kevin Dillon’s mug was in that thumbnail… and that’s not a good sign for what turns out to be a tough guy action flick. I think Johnny Drama did a great deal of damage to Kevin Dillon…. at least in my mind.

So A Day to Die isn’t even a good day to die, a bad day to die, or even A Good Day to Die Hard… though you might be mistaken seeing Bruce Willis and the font on the box art. This is an anemic action thriller about an ex-cop who gets in deep with a local gang leader. Pay him two million bucks in twelve hours or he’ll kill his pregnant wife. Now Dillon’s character has to get his old team back together to get him that dough.

This is a super generic parody of tough guy clichés but, to be clear, it’s not actually intentionally a parody; it’s deadly serious. But quite eye-rolling in its seriousness. There just isn’t enough here to justify its runtime and, in fact, seems to conclude its story with a half hour left to make me drum my fingers on my armchair.

At first, it seems like there might be something decent in this machismo-fest. The film looks decent, if not for an over-abundance of shaky cam and random flashing edits (not to mention a score out of Action Scores R Us). But that slowly ebbs away leaving just a lot of generic gunfights that makes me think they thought they were remaking Heat. Hot Take: They weren’t.

No, in the end, this is just another generic action flick with delusions of grandeur. Like many other movies recently, they hired Bruce Willis so they could slap him on the poster. And, I should note, Frank Grillo gets similar treatment, though he has the courtesy of appearing a little bit more than Willis. No, this is mainly the Johnny Drama action hour… guest stars added for rental sales.

Skip this one. It barely tries itself enough to justify you putting in the effort of clicking rent. Why go through the effort if they don’t?

Score: 58