Better than expected.

Rating: 8/10 (15 November 2007)

Internet Terrorism. Sounds scary don't it? I mean what would we do without the internet? We'd be forced to actually talk to people and get social lives. Thank God for John McClane who is once again in the right place at the wrong time messing things up royally for super baddie Gabriel played by Hit-man to be Timothy Olyphant and his bit on the side Mai played by Maggie Q. It all starts well enough with a whole load of suits panicking over their computers powering down, apparently this is bad so therefore they have local cops go and collect well known hackers who could have done it.
Enter McClane, who just so happens to be building the oh so obvious you're a terrible dad, father/daughter relationship when he's called to collect young and bearded power-nerd Matt Farrell played by Justin Long. McClane is a technophobe you see which is a cause for all kinds of predictable hilarity along the way. Things get interesting though as it's revealed that the hackers that helped Gabriel are also being picked off by him one by one. McClane does his thing and eventually the corpses start to pile up. The film keeps a good pace, slowing down to tell the deep-as-a-paddling-pool story at the right moments without coming off as a sudden cut of pace for no reason. The main action pieces are all vehicular based making for some marvellous spectacles but it's all too over the top to be taken seriously, luckily enough though, it doesn't want to be taken seriously.
Pretty much all the actors did a good job with the slight exception of Olyphant who just seemed like a generic bad guy saying all the right stuff at the right moment without doing much else, he did however get better towards the end. The charm of John McClane has always been the way he has fun whilst going about his business with wise cracks, trash talking and some memorable lines that keep the character alive and fresh for the new audience thanks to Bruce Willis who comes off so happy to be back with the character that made him famous all those years ago.
Die Hard 4.0 (I still would have preferred Live Free or Die Hard to be honest) is a good addition to the franchise but it might lose it's edge on repeated viewings, however it's better than the second film which didn't have any emotion at all, just McClane in a forgettable situation doing what he does best. 4.0 is a big film with a great finale and memorable "Yipee-Ki-yay Motherf*cker" at the end combined with a very novel way of disposing of the Gabriel which suits McClane so much and makes him that much cooler. It has its faults and comes very close to being the self-parody we didn't really want but it's so much fun it doesn't really matter.
8/10