Die Hard 4.0 - Cyber-terrorism

Rating: 9/10 (20 November 2007)

The "Die Hard" movies, which have starred Bruce Willis spanning through an illustrious 19-year career, have always been about action and excitement, much like any action movie. However, unlike most action movies, the hero in each, Detective John McClane, was an Everyman. This allowed Average Joes to connect with a genuine human being who got hurt and was often caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. McClane was sort of like an urban Indiana Jones and likewise, this is what allowed us to forge real connections with him, much rather than your typical Chuck Norris's, Sylvester Stallone's, and Arnold Schwarzenegger's.
2007's "Live Free or Die Hard" (or "Die Hard 4.0"), is the first "Die Hard" film Willis has appeared in since 1995's "Die Hard With a Vengeance." Just to get pretenses out of the way: "Live Free or Die Hard" is the best film since the original. While being more technically brilliant and showing off a kind of chic flashiness all too apparent in today's action films, it doesn't mean that "Live Free or Die Hard" is even remotely a bad film, it's just more technically sophisticated than its predecessors. But that's very good; it just shows that all concerned here are getting with the times, while not sacrificing a potent action movie legacy that's been built on believable characters and suspense. More to the point, "Live Free or Die Hard" proves that even dinosaurs like the 52-year-old Bruce Willis, still have a punch or two left in them.
The film is a technical marvel, to say the least. It has a number of breathtaking action scenes, thus making "Live Free or Die Hard" the most action-packed and exciting entry in the series since "Die Hard" back in 1988. Watching these action scenes, I got the feeling of expert craftsmanship, almost a nostalgic feeling for the action blockbusters of yesteryear. There are action scenes and then there are action scenes, which are not overblown by today's standards. I got the feeling of watching real human beings doing real human stunt-work, including watching Willis handle himself capably even while chaos is erupting around him.
The series has been handled by two skilled and capable directors so far - John McTiernan and Renny Harlin. In the director's seat this time is Len Wiseman, who is obviously hoping this big jump into the Hollywood limelight is his ticket out of cult "B"-movie fanfare like the "Underworld" films. To this critic's surprise, he, like the aged Willis, is able to handle himself capably and admirably. He's earned his spot in the "Die Hard" legacy.
This time around, McClane's task seems simple: escort a lowly computer hacker, Matthew Farrell (Justin Long), from New York City to Washington, D.C., for questioning by the F.B.I. after several of his hacker pals have bitten the dust. But because it seems that Farrell has been involved in some shady Internet dealings with a particularly cold-blooded Web-based terrorist named Thomas Gabriel (the effective Timothy Olyphant), things are going to get hectic real fast.
It isn't long before assassins come after McClane and Farrell and they stumble onto Gabriel's plot: he's going to use his legion of hackers and infinite computer resources to systematically shut down the entire United States (Farrell explains this three-step process as a "Fire Sale"). So it's up to McClane and the computer-savvy Farrell to use what technological resources they have left to foil Gabriel's plans before he puts us back into the Stone Age (oh, my, a world without computers and the Internet). However, when Gabriel is pushed into a corner, he's forced to take drastic measures and take McClane's feisty daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) hostage.
"Live Free or Die Hard" is really the first "Die Hard" film to take a slice of modern-day paranoia - cyber-terrorism - and work it into a feasible action film that at times is a little scary. We've come to be so reliant on technology that it's only a matter of time before a computer-savvy psycho like Thomas Gabriel comes along and exploits that fact. So, the smart-alecky script by Mark Bomback, taking inspiration from a news article titled "A Farewell to Arms" by John Carlin, really doesn't seem all that far-fetched when you think about it.
At center stage, of course, is Bruce Willis, sharing screen time with the youngster Justin Long. Bomback's screenplay, under Wiseman's skilled direction, provides the two with a believable amount of running dialogue, rapport and teamwork, giving them time to develop, and exchange humorous and wily insults back and forth to one another while running for their lives. (It's a generational buddy-trip that works.) Their first meeting, in Farrell's apartment, followed by a shootout, really sets the pace for the rest of the film, and guarantees that no one will be snoozing during this hardcore action-fest. Surely one of the best of these sequences has to be McClane's showdown with a Harrier Jet on a collapsing freeway. And then there are also McClane's potentially lethal encounters with Gabriel's chief baddies Mai (Maggie Q) and Rand (rising French action star Cyril Raffaelli). In a not-so-surprising cameo, filmmaker Kevin Smith also appears as an Armageddon-prepared hacker named "Warlock."
"Live Free or Die Hard" is the best film the series has to offer since the original 1988 "Die Hard." It proves to us that the days of real action movie heroism are not yet gone, and that action-hero dinosaurs like Bruce Willis can still roll with the new.
9/10