A worthy sequel to a classic franchise.

Rating: 8/10 (29 June 2007)

Die Hard. A title that sums up modern action, with Bruce Willis as the godfather. Everything he has done later on has always been slightly in the shadow of Die Hard, and for better or worse, he will always be remembered as John McClane, inventor of one of the most popular one liners of all time.
That was 19 years ago. Two sequels later and fast forward to 2007, and McClane steps back to save the day. What begins as a normal routine mission to escort a hacker, ends up as a personal vendetta when they become under attack by crazed hacker Thomas Gabriel and his deadly but hotter than life Asian beauty Mai Linh, trying to fire-sell the entire United States, claiming they're doing the country a favor. Fire-sell in this movie, means shutting down everything that runs the entire country, from transportation, communication, power, economy, everything that is driven by computers. Magically by connecting various high-tech looking computers they easily bypass every single security system built and take control of the entire U.S computer system, which while being an entertaining plot demands a complete "Leave your brain at the door" attitude to accept.
McClane of course, is not the guy to just sit around and watch the country go to hell. After nearly being killed several times, he gradually closes in on the hackers and kills them back one by one. As he himself explains it, he does it because nobody else can. And honestly, you'll be hard to find anyone else managing to "kill a helicopter with a car" because he was out of bullets.
Along with him, he has Justin Long posing as hacker Matt Farrell. Long actually does a nice job here, and he was entertaining to watch. Slightly cliché with the typical "Wussy who gets more and more confident until he becomes a man", but that's not Long's fault. He respects Willis and McClane, and it shows. What McClane says, goes. He doesn't get McClane into trouble by stupidly doing things, he refreshingly helps out and assists without causing trouble himself.
While mostly being eye-candy, McClane's daughter has some nice moments as well, but seems to have fallen slightly victim to the script as well. Initially showing her disrespect and anger for her father, she still shows every sign of having been his deepest fan and following his footsteps. It feels a bit too contradictory and she doesn't quite work as well as she should, but it's a minor gripe.
The action is well balanced between various dramatic scenes of chaos as Gabriel shuts down parts of the U.S. Several scenes, including a overview of how the traffic completely crashes everywhere and a twisted montage of the U.S presidents telling their people that all hope is lost works great, and there are several other scenes that nicely demonstrate the chaos caused. If you're able to shut off the brain for two hours, it becomes a fascinating imagination of what could have happened if the entire country was sent back to the stone age.
McClane of course, is the fly in the soup. The bug in the entire system that causes everything to crash. That one single malfunction. And it is in those times, when McClane stops or halts Gabriels progress, that we find ourselves looking at the very same lovable Mcclane 19 years ago. The one that made Holly realize just who that crazy cowboy hiding in the building was, driving Hans crazy. The feeling is still there, and when the action is clever, witty and on a smaller scale, it works well, at times just as well as the original. The scenes between McClane and Mai belong to the absolute highlights, and he delivers some of the best lines in the entire movie, up there with the classics from DH1.
Several other scenes, including a blackout in a subway tunnel, a great shootout with a french acrobat and an absolutely brilliant, short sequence where he stands face to face with a generic bad guy and takes him out point blank will remain classic parts of the franchise from now on as well, and Wiseman proves that he knows how to direct action. Despite PG-13, the action is very, very tense, there's a lot of killing going on, the blood is kept to a more natural level(there's still blood, just don't expect any fountains or huge pools of it) and the curses fly faster than the bullets.
The only scene where the movie stops feeling like a Die Hard movie is the Jet sequence, a well done but impersonal, generic and overdone part which feels more like something out of Terminator 2 than Die Hard. It feels out of place, too long, too over the top to even fit in as Die Hard. McClane might die harder than anyone else, but that was one part where less would have been more.
Otherwise, the rest was top notch stuff, and I'm very happy that DH4 turned out the way it did. Looking at it now, it deserved to be made. It will fit nicely along with the three other movies, and in my opinion, surpasses Die Hard with a Vengeance which is no small feat. It captures the feel of the first two most of the time, Willis is in top shape and just his look caused the theater to go crazy. He doesn't even have to say anything to make it work, but when he opens his mouth in this one, it works even better.
Here's to Die Hard 5, Willis has already said he would be willing to do it. Lets just hope that Live Free or Die Hard dies hard at the cinema so that we can see him for one more round.