John McClane is there, but does he die hard?

Rating: 7/10 (2 July 2007)

In short, not really. This however is absolutely not Bruce Willis' fault. He is working really hard to show that John McClane is very much alive and kickin', but his surroundings fail in so many ways you almost feel sorry for the effort Willis puts in. The story is quite alright with not too many plot holes for this kind of movie, so not much to complain in that department. The supporting cast however give more than enough reason to complain. Timothy Olyphant delivers a really weak performance as the main bad guy. Though it may be not his fault, because he's really got not much to work with. Most of the time he's making faces while talking angrily into a web cam. Oooh, scary. Then there is his main henchman, who is supposedly a french guy, and, to fill the current cliché, is quite adept in parcours. This one was really annoying, because during the run of the story he survives explosions, car crashes, falls from high buildings and being smashed into rigid objects at 50 mph. So McClane's fighting superman this time, huh? It's obvious that they tried to fill Karl's shoes from the first movie, but they failed. All the other characters look really pale and weakly developed in comparison to previous installments of the franchise, sidekicks included. The last thing that I did not like in this movie is are some of the action scenes. Sure, they are huge and they had to do something with the budget they had. But does it look like a "Die Hard" movie? Most of the time not. The action in many scenes is so far over the top, that it evokes more of a "yeah, right" than a "wow" feeling. Especially the fighter plane sequence comes to mind here.
So, what's the verdict? Is it unwatchable? No, certainly not. There were times when I had a lot of fun watching the movie. Is it a good movie? No, there are too many flaws for that. But it's not horrible either. And most importantly: is it a die hard movie? Sometimes. Willis IS McClane, which makes up for a good part of mediocre things in this movie, but the "Die Hard" feeling has faded a lot since parts 1 & 2 (and 3 for that matter, which was not so great also).
I give 6 out of 10.