Good fun but not really a Die Hard movie

Rating: 7/10 (7 July 2007)

This was a good movie. Good action, funny lines, lack of reliance on CG effects, evil eyed bad guy as well as Kevin Smith's most awesome cameo ever. I think I got my money's worth. I loved the way Marco Beltrami kept the good old themes of the now passed Michael Kamen in the show.
However I think Bruce Willis let me down a bit. The John McClane I remember was crazy, funny and with plenty to say, but here Willis just cruises through with perhaps one or two purely McClane moments.
The film also suffers from some really sucky ADR dubbing work. On many occasions you can plainly see someone's lips moving one way but what you hear is completely unrelated to what you see. I swear I saw one guy wiping his mouth with his sleeve and I could still hear him go through his sentence clearly.
Where's the macho arguments that we saw in the first three movies? Where's the attitude that McClane had and was evident between him and Samuel L. Jackson in the third? All these things are missing. Also McClane's use of his trademark line in this movie is such a cop out it made me die a little inside. And now McClane can jump from a burning truck onto concrete and walk away minutes later. Silly can be good, but sometimes it went a bit too far here.
Seems I'm the only one to see this.
All in all it's good fun, quite tight and provides good escapism, but it's not without its problems.