A silly movie

Rating: 4/10 (21 October 2007)

The movie started off quite awesome and I was already beginning to get the McClane-vibe. For example the scenes like Farrel/McClane after driving into one of the assassins who hangs on a fence and then they catapult the guy to a wall with comments like "Did you see that?"/"Saw it? I did it." Nice. Also we get the feeling that the bad guys are quite a handful and not your standard-action-movie-cannon-fodder. Then comes the US-president mixup, which I thought to be quite clever and fun. But it all collapses for me with a ridiculous scene in the tunnel. The lights go out and no car has headlights on? WTF? Isn't it required by the law in US, it is in EU. And begins the silliness - I could believe the fire hydrant stunt (even if the water pressure is never that high in real and guys in helicopters are clipped to it to avoid falling off), but the flying car in the tunnel and the police car+helicopter is ridiculous. It really annoys me when a movie starts out serious and then turns out to be a bs-silly. Talking about characters, then McClane is no more the hard-breathing hot-blooded John from the first movies. He's a bald old tough guy called Bruce Willis who doesn't remember how to be John McClane. I wouldn't buy "he's just old". But from another aspect in the Die Hard series - I have always loved the "I'm just a human" feel. That feel is somewhat compromised with the "fire at the good guys, but they cannot be hit" cliché.
Couple of quick notes to summarize my attitude: Is the Nokia 9300 really capable of satellite communication? What kind of a hacker (especially uber-1337) leaves his webcam open to wide world and lets others to control it? Furthermore, what kind of a hacker leaves his webcam on when he is not using it? And furthermore, what kind of a hacker actually uses a webcam? And what kind of an hacker lets to actually trace himself? Tech-bs continues with hi-tek computers with unknown operating systems with 3d windows and alerts like "connection breached", contrary to usual "unknown error has occurred" etc. It's just stupid to wear 9-inch heels on a military operation. Was the parkour/free running-villain idea straight from watching Casino Royale?
All in all - I loved the dialog (or in cases it's absence), the fast pace, not at all Die Hard like political/anti-government 21st century plot. Because it deals with some real issues, perhaps it even points out to some guys in the gov, what might happen. I didn't like the stupid action scenes where Wiseman goes bananas (in addition to above mentioned, the F-35 on the highway circus), the hacker silliness, Bruce Willis being all calm not-McClane, not at all Die Hard like political/anti-government 21st century plot. The latter is here also because so much is left unanswered (like who are the bad guys/hackers/french assassins and such - we have been introduced only to Gabriel. McClane's 1-800-henchmen?) and there is nothing surprising to the flow of the story.
So it isn't all bad, but I'm glad I won the tickets to cinema. I'm not sure if I would have wanted to waste my own money on something as silly as the 4.0.