Bruce Willis' new ‘Die Hard' scores with $25M debut

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Bruce Willis remains a die-hard at the box office.

Willis' action sequel “A Good Day to Die Hard” debuted as the weekend's top draw with a $25 million debut from Friday to Sunday. The 20th Century Fox release raised its domestic total to $33.2 million since opening Thursday for Valentine's Day to get a jump on the long President's Day weekend.

The previous weekend's No. 1 movie, Universal's comedy “Identity Thief,” ran a close second with $23.4 million to lift its haul to $70.7 million.

Debuting at No. 3 with $21.4 million was Relativity Media's romance “Safe Haven,” starring Julianne Hough and Josh Duhamel in an adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks novel.

The Weinstein Co. animated adventure “Escape from Planet Earth” opened at No. 4 with $16.1 million.

Read more Movies stories from the Miami Herald

The Lone Ranger (PG-13)

There’s a rollicking Wild West adventure buried deep inside The Lone Ranger, a bloated, mega-budget revival of the story of the iconic gunslinger and his Native American sidekick Tonto. The movie is a spirited entertainment whenever it manages to take flight, such as in two enormous action sequences that bookend the film set aboard speeding locomotives, or the occasional comic exchanges between the masked hero (a square-jawed, endearingly earnest Armie Hammer) and his bizarro mystical partner Tonto (Johnny Depp in subdued oddball mode, buried under pancake makeup and wearing a dead bird on his head as a hat). When The William Tell Overture, the Ranger’s theme song since his radio days in the 1930s, finally blares on the soundtrack after being sneakily withheld for much of the picture, the effect is so rousing that you levitate in your seat a little bit.
MAN OF STEEL (PG-13)

Man of Steel (PG-13)

What went wrong with Man of Steel? The early teasers promised Terrence Malick. The finished film is more Michael Bay. Henry Cavill as Kal-El, a fugitive from a dead planet who gets god-like powers from our sun, is easily the best actor to ever play the role, pensive and thoughtful in spots, furious and heroic in others. There’s a lot going on behind his eyes. In smaller roles, Russell Crowe fares better than Marlon Brando did as Jor-El, who can communicate with his son from beyond the grave, and Michael Shannon seems like the perfect maniac to play General Zod, a power-mad despot who shares Kal-El’s powers.
THIS IS THE END (R)

This Is the End

This Is the End is a marvelously sustained, high-wire goof – a movie so nutty and daring, so crazy and out-there, that it feels like a low-budget independent except with big stars and a sizable budget. The movie marks the directorial debut of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who had previously collaborated as writers on Superbad and Pineapple Express. Their new movie has that same brash, did-they-just-say-that? attitude, only this one takes it to apocalyptic extremes – literally.

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