Die hard has outgrown what first made it great...

Rating: 6/10 (4 July 2007)

I had only an inkling of this idea until I saw the fourth title in the series, but think about it: Die Hard's scope has increased with each installment. The original took place in a single building. The second was a whole airport complex and surrounding area. The third was the whole city. Now, with the fourth one, we've got an adventure to save the world.
I know that I am not alone when I say this: part of what made Die Hard (The original) great was that it was such a personal-level action flick. The bad guys want money, and John just wants to save a small group of hostages (The fact that his wife is in there is irrelevant) More than this, though: he was fighting for his own survival. He was being hunted, and became a hunter. The confined space of Nakatomi plaza made it all the better: by the end of the movie we feel like we know the building as well as the characters. We see the same rooms throughout the film, and we get a feel for the layout and a general sense of the building. This was wonderful: it felt like a real building, and that small, personal scope made me and many others feel like we were right there with Mclain, counting our bullets and using appropriated supplies to tie off our own wounds. And the whole time, every time a terrorist goes down, we're counting them down. The enemy had our hero out-gunned, but they weren't invincible. Also, Mclain got the snot beat out of him. By the end of the movie, he's noticeably just barely hanging in there. The whole thing was awesome action, but it was just perfect in terms of scope and realism.
Die Hard 2 changed this. We were at an airport, but Mclain wasn't in the same situation. Yes, his wife was once again in danger, but it was indirect. The terrorists didn't know about her, and couldn't use her to make the conflict with Mclain personal. He was an interloper, in the situation because he chose to be: he had a hero complex. This is why I didn't like this movie. Mclain wasn't being hunted, the terrorists were mostly without personality, and mostly just fodder for the "bigger" action scenes. The airport setting also meant that we were moving around too much to get as immersed as we were in the first one. It still tried, though, and I did get kind of into it. Decent twist, as well.
The third installment was somewhat saved by the appearance of Samuel L. Jackson, but again: the setting and terrorist threat were just too large and impersonal, even though the half of the plan is a personal vendetta against Mclain. It seems contradictory, but by leading us on a tour of the whole damned city and dealing with countless numbers of people, none of whom really get developed fully, the movie turned a personal conflict into a "save-the-world" romp. The series changed here, and not for the better. Stand-alone? It was a decent action movie, but it carries the name die-hard, and thus must be measured against it's predecessors (In my opinion).
Now we have Die Hard 4, and I really want to like it. It has a bit of a message with its constant references to the media and government. Whether or not you agree with the opinions of the characters aside, these things really just distracted me. Great, you want to have some political commentary, fine. I could have gotten past it, but this movie is almost entirely about politics and the actions of the American government in relation to the film's main protagonist. The events in the movie happen on a nation-wide scale, and affect millions of people. There seem to be countless goons on the bad guys' side, a fact that Mclain actually jokes about at one point. Even the handful of "special" terrorists, the ones that Mclain must fight one-on-one and that pose a serious threat to him are left with few revealing lines, and in one's case, we hear more jokes about how "hot" she was (These are made postmortem) than we do character-building lines of dialog. Mclain is dragged into the situation, rather than rushing in on his own, but it's only a plot device this time. It isn't until late in the film that he gets any sort of personal stake in the events going on around him, and everything until that point just makes me hate his character. He's tripping on a hero-god complex. The movie sets us up with a couple comments about the ineptitude of the US government's ability to deal with crises, so since the government can't handle it, obviously Mclain has to? What happened to the man running for his life, trying to get help from the outside from the first Die Hard? He's certainly nowhere to be found in this film. There are still points where he acts like he doesn't want any part in this whole "save the world" business, but he follows these up by hunting down terrorists without any real provocation or motivation other than a vague order he was given at the start of the film that became irrelevant about half-an-hour in. I couldn't help but think as I was watching that right then is when the Mclain I knew from the first film would have dropped the kid he's with off at FBI headquarters, then gone home to sit out the crisis. This is my problem with this movie: Mclain is now officially your stereotypical action hero, and nothing more.
I have to give credit where credit is due: Willis did an excellent job capturing the same "John Mclain" essence: the tone, stance, and sarcasm are all spot-on. It's not his fault that they've insisted on disposing of the movie's character.