An entertaining entry in a very entertaining series

Rating: 7/10 (3 August 2007)

I am a fan of all of the Die Hard movies, and enjoyed this one, too. No matter how out-sized the stories and spectacular the visual effects, the movies remain grounded in the solid, distinctive John McClane character, so well played by Bruce Willis, and in the concept of a head-on conflict between him and a master criminal with a master plan.
In Die Hard 4, the gritty, smart, resourceful attempts to fight back against the technological wizardry and sheer firepower deployed by the villains is authentic, priceless McClane. So is his banter, especially with the kung fu henchwoman. The character of the young computer nerd who is McClane's sidekick in the movie complements McClane's character well, without duplicating him, the problem to some extent with the otherwise interesting Samuel L. Jackson in the third movie. As did its predecessors, the fourth movie attempts to differentiate the various villains. Of course, there is a grand criminal scheme, even if it is more vague and abstract than that in the gritty, detailed third movie.
That said, and although I always look forward to the next Die Hard movie, I have not liked the third and fourth Die Hard films as much as the first and second. There was something interesting, intense, and masterful about how the first two resolved a complicated, discrete problem in one rich, unfolding setting, with an urgent, direct personal stake by McClane in the outcome. The third and even more so the fourth are so far-flung and grand-scale that much of the sense of a real one-on-one battle in isolated, close quarters is lost. Something is also lost, in terms of accessibility and impact, when an action movie is as dominated as Die Hard 4 is by computers (and I do not mean computer-generated effects but a plot itself dependent on computers).
The lack of familiar supporting characters in the third and fourth films hurt continuity and gave them a colder feel. In Die Hard 4, McClane does not even have around him his NYPD buddies from the third film, though taking him off his home turf does add variety and suspense. Adding the character of the daughter is okay but she is nothing special or familiar.
The first and second films used music far better than the other two (who cares if Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is included in the trailer of Die Hard 4 if it or anything comparable is not in the movie itself?). Finally, the main villain was never better than in the first movie, and, although the second was more ordinary and Jeremy Irons was somewhat disappointing in the third, the unseasoned, one-dimensional man in the fourth movie probably ranks last. Still, the Die Hard movies may be the best series of action movies there is.