A Return To The Die Hard Style We So Love!

Rating: 8/10 (21 November 2007)

Ready. Set. Action! Action being the key word here. LIVE FREE OF DIE HARD (aka Die Hard 4) is an action-fest filled with wonderfully similar themes we've all seen in the first DIE HARD film. Bruce Willis (16 BLOCKS), of course, returns as officer-cum-detective John McClane.
He's beat. He's tired. He's beat tired. But family always comes first, and McClane is first seen spying on his college daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, BOBBY), trying to protect for the wiles of the world. Naturally Lucy despises his attempts to protect her and storms off. Later, she will come to respect her father and proudly announce that her last name isn't Genero, but McClane.
John then gets an assignment as a taxi. He's told to pick up a computer hotshot named Matthew Farrell (Justin Long, THE BREAK UP) and bring him to a special FBI task force that's tracking a string of computer crimes targeted at the American infrastructure. Once McClane and Matthew meet, it rapidly becomes apparent that somebody wants Matthew dead. Bullets fly. Bombs go off. McClane, again, is in way over his head ...exactly where Die Hard fans want him.
A computer heist known as a "fire sale" is taking place in which everything vital to U.S. survival gets shut down. Traffic. Television and radio. Electricity. Everything that is currently run by high-tech computers is going off-line. Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) is the bad-guy who is initially seen as a terrorist but is later found to have financial aspirations (sound familiar?). When McClane becomes a pest, Gabriel soon turns to kidnapping someone close to the detective's heart.
McClane and Matthew race to save America (and a family member) from a devastating computer meltdown. Car and helicopter chases, semi-truck and harrier jet encounters, all build upon the other until the final, fateful end.
The dialogue between the computer illiterate McClane and the gurus of the internet are hilariously pulled off. The geeks can't get to where they need to be unless McClane blasts their way through, and McClane doesn't know what to do unless he's told by the geeks.
A great fight sequence between Bruce Willis and Maggie Q (BALLS OF FURY) is something to watch for, especially since Willis' character ends up back in an elevator shaft (homage to Die Hard 1). It's also entertaining to see Willis' McClane get his butt stomped by the sexy Asian woman ...for a while.
And let's not forget one of the coolest stunts seen on celluloid in some time: a car launch and crashing into a helicopter. Although completely unrealistic, it was amazingly awesome to watch.
This is something Die Hard fans have been waiting for; another film that is overly-audacious and loaded with nonstop action scenes. It's flat-out fun!