Exciting Action Film with a Totally Unbelievable Premise

Rating: 5/10 (26 March 2006)

I have no problems with the action in this movie. The acting is fine and the characters are interesting. Add the plot twists and you have a watchable entertaining movie that is worth your time.
What caused me to rate this film a couple of stars lower that I would have otherwise is an idiotic part of the plot. Airliners are stacked up over Dulles and the tower can't communicate with them. Their radio engineer comes up with the idea of rigging the outer marker beacon to transmit a voice communication to all of the aircraft apprising them of the situation. Meanwhile the Army is being called by phone, TV news crews are transmitting back to their stations and ground vehicles are moving in and out of the airport. If one can communicate by phone, TV link and ground, why not just get hold of the regional traffic center to alert the airliners and divert them to other airports. Meanwhile John McClane's wife is on board one of these planes and it has 90 min of fuel on-board. Hmmm, 90 minutes at 500 mph. gives one lots of time and distance to find some kind of alternate destination. But alas, that would ruin the plot line of John trying to save his wife once more from certain death. This hole in the plot is big enough to fly an Airbus A380 through.