Mindless, muscular and mirthsome

Rating: 8/10 (5 August 2007)

This movie was much more entertaining and enjoyable than I was expecting. For any fans of the previous three movies it's required viewing: for anyone else who just fancies a couple of hours of escapist action fare, this is well worth the price of the cinema entry.
To my mind, action movies need two key ingredients to work - firstly, and clearly, great action scenes, but also humour. Die Hard 4 (or whatever its ridiculous official title is) has both of these elements.
McClane's sidekick Matt Farrell (played by Justin Long) provides nearly all of the comic relief. He is given some good lines but delivers them with panache. And as my wife said, he was well cast as the computer geek in that he looked skinny and nerdy enough to play the part, but also had some sex appeal in a young Keanu Reeves or Matthew Broderick kind of way.
The plot is verging on the ridiculous, although the writers neatly manage to conjure up a villain, Thomas Gabriel, played reasonably one-dimensionally by Timothy Olyphant, with no real religious or ideological motivation. His henchmen/bodyguards are of the indentikit European variety, although it is not clear why this is so. (The exception was the under-used Maggie Q character, Mai Lihn.) Computer expert and former government employee Gabriel is trying to shut down the whole of the USA in three stages (a "fire-sale"), while McClane tries to protect Farrell, the only hacker/computer expert who remains alive with the expertise to help stop Gabriel in his tracks. The chemistry between Willis and Long works well and is the source of almost all the good comic moments in the film.
But the implausibility doesn't really matter - the action is fast-paced and insanely OTT at times, and Willis reprises the McClane role with his customary panache. Any criticism that the plot is barely believable misses the point about a decent action movie - it's about the stunts, the CGI, the humour and the violence.