When there is a Willis

Rating: Null/10 (7 July 2007)

Okay, enough of these sequels thingy. We are not even talking about Die Hard, one, two, three, and compare them with the new one. Thankfully, the film does not need to latch on its famous predecessors. It can pretty much stand on its own, trust Bruce Willis. Oh, yes, it's a Bruce Willis movie, frame-to-frame, action-to-action. So let's talk about Willis as John McClane, a role that made him a star in the first place. Willis rocks like never before. There are two shades of character that Willis is good at playing, a doting, overprotective father to his teenage daughter (Armageddon) and a good cop taking it all to save the day (Mercury Rising). Here, he does both the job perfectly. He's not the McClane of the earlier movies. He has aged, but boy, he's still a handful. Talk about aging gracefully! Vampire specialist Len Wisemen (Underworld) turns his attention to cyber crime this time, and if you can handle the idea of blowing up a computer by pushing the delete button, let him guide you through the action, cyber or otherwise. Gun fire, explosion, car races and other action set-pieces are the highlight of any Die Hard film, and here, you have them in abundance  computers blow up, cars go flying, flyovers come crashing, and McClane survives all these to save the day. And you don't complain, they are all first rate, something that you have seen on the big screen after a long time (if some scenes reminds you of The Italian Job, Underworld or Hollow Man, you can always ignore them.). There was a super nerd called Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) working on government cyber security programme, told the government that the countries cyber security is vulnerable and they must do something about it. But the bosses would not hear anything about it and he was duly fired. Now, the nerdy boy is all fired up to teach the government a lesson by systematically hacking all the computer systems in the country  telecom, electricity, energy, everything. It's a virtual 9/11 situation out there and none have a clue what's going on, except for Matt Farrell (Justin Long), a hacker and our good ole' detective McClane gets embroils into the scenes when he was asked to escort Ferrell for an interrogation. Then follows the classic situation, two unlikely partners in a desperate journey to save the world: A geek and a gunslinger. Sit tight for a jolly good ride. Long complements Willis old-style cop with his geeky sweetness (If all the computer manipulations look simplistic, that okay, the film is about the action, right, not how far can you take this cyber crime business!) A feast for all Bruce Willis fans, after a long time.