Live PG-13 or Die Soft

Rating: 3/10 (10 July 2007)

A Die Hard 4 was discussed and thrown around for years. There was a point when Tears of the Sun was supposed to be Die Hard 4, with John McClane crashing a plane in the jungle and leading the survivors to safety through a war-zone. In my opinion, the series ended perfectly with the brilliant Die Hard With A Vengeance. After so many false starts it's been 12 years since we last saw John McClane. He was in his late 30s then, now he's in his early 50s. A lot has happened to Hollywood action films in that space of time. By that I mean they have lost their nerve and all of their edge.
Too often our summer movies are nothing but PG-13 crap, designed for the kiddies. Die Hard has always been a hardcore action series, it is a slap in the face and an insult to fans that this unnecessary fourth installment be aimed at an audience that was only 1-year old when the DHWAV was released and an audience that is STILL not old enough to see any of those movies in the first place.
But asides from that, LFODH has it's own problems that not even an R-rating could fix. First of all...Len Wiseman! Why the hell did Fox give this precious franchise to a man who has only directed two awful Underworld movies? Did they learn nothing from AVP when they gave hack Paul Anderson control? We all know what garbage that ended up being. Ironically surnamed Wiseman's style of direction just does NOT suit Die Hard. Gone is the naturalized cinematography of McTiernan and even Harlin. In it's place is a horrid low brightness/high contrast look that has been popular in this post-Michael Bay world. It makes the action and locations quite blurred and incoherent and it sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the other movies. And what's with that silly font in the opening credits? DH2 and DHWAV didn't even have opening credits. Bruce Willis is the only alumni here. Not even any of the original producers are involved. This is not a Die Hard film. Aesthetically and spiritually, this is something completely different, and vastly inferior.
McClane, still a NYPD Detective, despite the ending of DHWAV (hints at alcoholism and being a suspect in the Federal Reserve raid) is sent to pick up computer wiz-kid Matt Farrell (Justin Long, who doesn't appear to be ageing) to help the NSA figure out why computer networks across the country are malfunctioning. Right away nameless baddies are onto them but McClane offs them no sweat. But not all of them, he foolishly leaves the main henchmen alive for some reason (to make more movie).
It turns out that shockingly unscary 'terrorist' Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Elephant) is behind the computer villainy and is out for revenge against the government for firing him after all the hard work he put in for them (just like Travis Dane in Under Siege 2). He's got the brains and the manpower to take the entire US network in to his vice-like grip and send the country back to the stone age. No one can find him since all of his equipment is packed onto a large moving vehicle to keep the signal's transparent and untraceable (just like Travis Dane in Under Siege 2).
Oh God...why did they not get someone else to play this character? Timothy Elephant clearly has no clue how to play a baddie. His idea of sounding threatening is to to move his lips around while talking but never actually opening his mouth. Ooooh...gee don't hurt me! And why Kevin Smith? This really was a step too far. This man doesn't belong in a Die Hard film, plain and simple. All this was was a wink at the audience and another excuse for him to plug Star Wars for the 86 millionth time. Wrong, just wrong!
The action scenes are mildly entertaining, but they are shot and cut with the usual post-Michael Bay confusion. You never really feel like your part of it or feel McClane's danger. And I am sick of Willis and Co. promoting this as 'old-school' with 'real stunts'. You can clearly tell that the majority of it is still crappy CGI. And the cop car/helicopter explosion is just too far-fetched, regardless of how much you can suspend your disbelief. Did a five-year-old write this? That kind of stunt may work fine when you're playing with your Matchbox cars but not in a Die Hard movie.
The lack of swearing didn't bother me too much. You can tell that they did have a lot of cussing in the original cut but were forced to loop some ADR over the top of it after studio pressure. This clearly means that there will be uncut DVD with some perverse title like 'The YipeeKayay Unrated Edition with hardcore footage THEY wouldn't let you see in cinemas'.
Marco Beltrami's score is also a total letdown. After his autopilot hack-job of Terminator 3, why did they let him have control of someone else's themes? The late Michael Kamen did some great stuff on the Die Hard movies but Beltrami only uses his fourth most reoccurring cue and ditches the rest, save for a cue from Die Hard 2.
To me, Die Hard finished in 1995. This film, which was only made to spark some life into a flopping career, is just a tame action film starring Bruce Willis. It's not Die Hard. This one definitely will NOT 'blow you through the back wall of the theatre'.
Oh...and Mr. Writer, if you paid any attention to the other movies you'd know that McClane's son is called John Jnr, not Jack. It seems like you don't know Jack actually.