A waste of time and money

Rating: 3/10 (1 February 2009)

I generally like the Die Hard franchise. Number one was fantastic and to this day enjoyable. Number two was a little less believable but it was still a class movie. Number 3 had a bad plot but Samuel L. Jackson was a great cast vs Willis. But 4.0 didn't do it for me.
As others have pointed out, Die Hard one was the first of the average joe turned savior. The fail able hero Bruce Willis vs a bunch of robbers.
The problem for any sequel seems to be the action always needs to be better, the bad guys badder, the amount of money they want to steal even more huge. I think that is where 4.0. fails to convince.
A car launched into the air taking out a helicopter, another car crashes on top of two other cars whilst just missing Willis and Long. Willis on top of a slowly spinning pilot-less jet fighter. Willis driving an SUV blind through a wall and manages to take out one of the bad guys in an elevator shaft. It is too much to make it enjoyable.
Then there's the plot. For about an hour you have absolutely no clue what the bad guys are aiming at but eventually their goal is revealed. The bad guys are trying to steal billions by taking some computer files. These bad guys are led by a brilliant software engineer who, for some unknown reason, decides to ask several hackers to write a hacking code to get into a system he himself has designed. Uhm? If he designed that system himself, why didn't he himself write such a program? After these hackers have written such a code for large sums of money, for some strange the bad guys decide all these hackers need to be killed. Mcclane is tasked with protecting one of them.
In Die Hard one the bad guys take over a building, in two an airport and in three a city. And now in 4.0 half the U.S. You wonder what will be next in Die Hard 5; the world? The galaxy? I wish it would be something oversee-able. A mall. A factory. A Mcdonalds for all I care. But i really wish Mclane would be Mclane again. A likable ordinary guy, without special fighting techniques, trying to beat a few ordinary bad guys. And without overdone special effects or boring sidekicks.
I bought 4.0 on DVD for a few bucks but after watching 60 minutes I stopped the play because i got bored. Finished it after a few days but I still conclude my money was wasted.