Die Hard : 4.0/10.0

Rating: 4/10 (8 August 2007)

Funny how references and influences seems to suffer from a boomerang effect these days. Take the "Die Hard" movies for instance, whereas the first one almost immediately turned into a classic that redefined the way Hollywood creates action movies for years, the last one that resurrects a series everyone thought definitely over, is just an average movie, that barely copies elements we already saw ten times or more (an informatics terrorist treat, a tired and angry (anti)-heroes who's unhappy to have to save the world one more time, etc). And the most annoying thing is that you already saw that in the previous "Die Hard", but also in other series, like "24", which are directly inspired by "Die Hard" (unity of time and space, charismatic terrorists, realism in the action scenes, and Jack Bauer has a lot to see with John McClane : he's also a tragic hero who sacrifice everything for his country and has nothing in return). And the least I can say is that this "Live free or die hard" is of course the worst of the "Die Hard" movies, but it's also worst than modern action series like "24".
This movie deals with a very "modern" subject (that will certainly look ridiculous and old-fashion in ten years, just like this movie) : a giant informatics virus is put in the internet by terrorists in order to destroy civilization and send it back to the stone age (and, for it's a "Die Hard", also make a lot of money...). But one man, that seems to belong to this stone age and doesn't know anything in new technologies (in "Die Hard 2", he didn't know how to use a phone in a plane !) will break their evil plan : this man is John McClane.
No surprise from the script that passively gives the spectator his blockbuster dose of adrenaline, action and humor. And this lack of originality in the story is underlined by the platitude of the directing : cold photography to give an high-tech and modern aspect, movie for TV-style as soon as the action scenes are done, and impressive (McClane crash a car in a helicopter ?), but boring (saw that already, it's Jack Bauer in "Matrix", isn't it ?) action scenes. Where the hell is the inventive and inspiration of McTiernan ? Where is his glorious use of space, the great use of vertical in the building of the fist movie and the amazing horizontal use of NYC in the third in this impersonal movie. Ha, right, John McTiernan is now too old for Hollywood since the "the 13rd Warrior" experience, and producers prefer inoffensive "yes-man" like Len Wiseman to finish plate sequels as this one on time.
It's really a sad period for popular cinema, when Hollywood only recycles itself, doing unless sequels, prequels, remakes or adaptations. And it's not even as if they're as good as the old ones...