Nothing special

Rating: Null/10 (16 November 2007)

John McClane returns after a decade or so, looking a little bruised and battered before the action even begins it has to be said, and the subtlety of his everyman persona is extinguished within the first five minutes as we see him in the badly written role of over-protective father to a feisty McClane-clone daughter. That early scene served warning of how far the franchise has fallen. It's still good in terms of summer blockbuster fare, but it is unrecognisable as the spawn of the 80s original. Willis as McClane back then redefined the genre  here he's just doing an Arnie impersonation as he slides around on the wing of an out-of-control fighter plane and issues warnings to the bad guy that he's coming to get him.
After that early worrying insight into McClane's domestic woes, things start to get back on track as we see McClane and his suspect/sidekick embroiled in a high-tech game of cat-and-mouse around the streets of Washington in what is a cute and effective reversal of the 'confined space' scenario of the originals. Willis and Justin Long play well off each other and, while Timothy Olyphant's set-up is a little too Blofeld-like for this franchise, the systematic shutdown of society's high-tech infrastructure is as entertaining as it is outrageous.
Sadly, writer Mark Bomback runs out of ideas in the final third of the film and reverts to typical action-hero clichés. The film careers alarmingly out of control, abandoning reality for the sake of 'look-what-we-can-do' effects that have that aforementioned fighter plane dipping under bridges in pursuit of McClane's truck. ('You're shooting at the wrong guy!' Willis screams at the pilot, and I couldn't help wondering how often those words had been screamed by other victims of similar mistakes in the last eighteen years). The climax is particularly weak  I can't recall ever seeing a bad guy meet his end so lamely or irrationally  after all, surely if McClane can survive the impact of the bullet it would do even less damage to Gabriel.
For mindless high-impact entertainment you probably won't need to look any further than this one. But, sadly that's all that's left of the original superlative idea  and after a break of ten years or so you'd have thought they could have done better..