Not quite as good as its predecessors, but a fun action movie nevertheless

Rating: 8/10 (13 July 2014)

After a 12 year hiatus between this and Die Hard With a Vengeance, John McClane is back in a fun adventure. While the film lacks the hard edge of the three previous entries, is unnecessarily sanitised in an attempt to get a bigger audience; lacks the emotionally satisfying epilogues of 1 and 2, and the brutal fun of 3,it is an entertaining outing that does actually play well to McClane's character, with Bruce Willis wittily acknowledging is older years, including typical parental anxieties about his growing up daughter and as a result has a subtly amusing "I'm too old for this s***" vibe throughout the film.
Supporting players are good, Justin Long's and Kevin Smith hacker characters are pretty entertaining, as is Mary Elizabeth Winstead as a feisty Lucy McClane. Maggie Q is the standout villain is a ruthless, focused and largely silent character – in fact her boss, head villain Thomas Gabriel (a seriously disgruntled ex-civil servant!) comes off not only weaker and less interesting compared to Maggie Q's character Mai Linh, but does not reach the heights of William Sadler's lead bad guy from Die Hard 2, and certainly is nowhere near the tension and power exuded by both Jeremy Irons and Alan Rickman as the Grubers from the previous entries.
As a result of fewer interesting characters this time around, more of the burden falls on Willis, but he carries the film brilliantly, as usual. The plot is actually very clever, but as the film goes towards its climax, it begins to run out of steam somewhat, leading to a rather anti-climactic climax and not hugely satisfying epilogue. However the rest of the film is a lot of fun and very entertaining, with some great action set pieces and some funny wise-cracks. Pacing is very good and the film's interest never flags. Director Len Wiseman keeps the pace zipping along very nicely, and does try very hard to have the action set pieces as in camera rather than visual effects were possible. He also has a lot of reverence from the previous films, are there are some amusing nods to these if you pay attention. The climax with an F35B jet is typical Hollywood OTT and while fun doesn't have the finesse of the Harrier sequence from True Lies. Visual effects of are solid, Steven Duggan's photography is slick, as is Nicolas De Toth's editing . Marco Beltrami produces a very effective score, which stands up very well against Michael Kamen's work from the three previous outings, but brings a new fresh musical atmosphere to the proceedings.
Overall and entertaining and fun picture, and while not quite as good as the previous entries is a worthy sequel.