Past-it Action Hero

Rating: 3/10 (28 June 2007)

All good things... Except in Hollywood, of course, they frequently don't come to an end, do they? With the cameras now rolling on the fourth addition to the Indiana Jones chronicles (which, begrudgingly, even this reviewer must acknowledge as being a fairly exciting prospect), the time seems wearily appropriate for catching up with John McLane (and, this time around, his grown-up daughter) and booing and hissing at the latest evil villain, with whom he must match wits.
Willis's charming grin is, of course, still firmly in place as, to be fair, is the franchise's emphasis on mostly exciting action set-pieces. What, unfortunately, seems now to be entirely absent is any sense of coherent narrative structure or the lip-smackingly evil but villainously intelligent characterizations of an Alan Rickman in the original Die Hard (1988) or Jeremy Irons in ...with a vengeance (1995). In their place, a perfunctory Dr Evil-esquire plan that inevitably involves McLane and which, with weary predictability, puts his daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in mortal peril. Oh, and McLane isn't really getting on with his offspring at the film's outset...
In a nutshell, McLane is asked to escort hyper-hacker Matt Farell (Justin Long) into FBI custody - Farell is among a number of computer geniuses that have got the feds twitchy since their HQ computers were (temporarily) hacked. When Farell's apartment is converted into Swiss Cheese by certain terrorist types just after McLane comes a-knocking, everyone's favourite NYPD detective smells one of his famous rats, and the pair come into the orbit of Thomas Gabriel (a very overplayed, would-be psychotic Timothy Olyphant), a very bitter former NSA computer expert, who's out to teach Uncle Sam a thing or two by systematically shutting America down, via the internet. A so-called Fire Sale - everything must go...
All well and good - these days, it doesn't sound any more unlikely a plan than, say, flying jet airliners into tall buildings or blowing yourself up on the Metro. Unfortunately, whether due to budget restrictions or simple laziness on the parts of director Len Wiseman and writer Mark Bomback, we never really get to see what the awe-inspiring and terrifying consequences of such action might be, short of a few nasty traffic pile-ups and lots of lights going out. To wit, McLane isn't really put through much hell before, inevitably, he starts getting well-'ard with the terrorists.
Much praise has been heaped on the stunts which are, in keeping with the 'Timex hero in a digital age' theme, nearly all genuine rather than CGI- based but, whether they're blue-screened or for real, things exploding are still just loud bangs if there's little or no suspense. Let's face it, charming though Willis still is (and this installment's buddy-buddy factor works pretty well, thanks to an intelligent, twitchy turn from Long), there is never any doubt that it's going to be McLane victorious and, once again, entirely at ease with having just killed some 15-20 terrorists.
Credibility was there in spades in Die Hard, despite its 'high concept' narrative - by part four, rhyme and reason seem to have been finally sacrificed for box-office certainties. A shame.