Top-notch action!!

Rating: 10/10 (23 March 2010)

It's been a long twelve years, but John McClane is back and better than ever. John McClane (Bruce Willis) is now divorced from his wife and dealing with a broken relationship with his daughter, Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). The FBI requests that he pick up a known computer hacker, Matt Farrell (Justin Long), and bring him in for questioning regarding a recent security breach of the FBI computer system. McClane arrives just in time to save Farrell's life from a team of assassins. Meanwhile, more computer attacks are being carried out by a terrorist mastermind named Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) who is systematically shutting down a variety of utilities, bringing Washington, D.C. to a virtual halt. Farrell recognizes the pattern of events as a "fire sale," a plan to destroy the country's infrastructure. Taking Farrell into protective custody, McClane has to keep him alive as they avoid continued attempts on their lives and race against time to stop the terrorists from plunging the nation into a new stone age.
I've loved the "Die Hard" movies since I was a kid, and I knew this one would not disappoint. While I don't mind CGI in movies, "Live Free or Die Hard" is a terrific throwback to '80s action movies, and while there are a fair share of digital effects, a lot of stuff is done live and even with models, giving it something of an old school feel that elevates it above a lot of stuff that's come out in recent years. A little over 50 years old, Bruce Willis easily slips back into the role of John McClane and shows he can still kick ass. The rest of the cast is good. I particularly like Olyphant as the villain. At first I was worried how the film was going to handle the fractured relationship between McClane and his daughter, but it was thankfully done very well and did not distract from the story in the way many other parent-child relationships like this have done in other movies. Winstead plays Lucy McClane as a feisty girl who can take care of herself, and she gets some nice moments during the later half of the film.
The story is tight, has a great pace and some nice developments along the way, and the action is top notch. Director Len Wisemen brings back some of the closed-in, claustrophobic feelings that were present in the first two films. This is probably best recreated during an excellent sequence that involves McClane fighting Gabriel's second hand, Mai Linh (Maggie Q), in and around an SUV that finds its way into an elevator shaft, dangling precariously several stories about the ground. Their preceding fight ranks right up there with the fight in "Die Hard" between McClane and the terrorist Karl. And the climactic sequence in which McClane, having commandeered the terrorist's high-tech big rig, is pursued by an F-35 Lightning jet is one hell of an action set piece. Many fans complained about the film's PG-13 rating, since the previous three films were all rated R. But it didn't bother me at all. I've now seen it three times. This is a top notch action film, one of the best in the last ten years, in the finest "Die Hard" tradition, and nothing delivers action quite like a "Die Hard" movie.