Die Hard 4.0

Rating: 6/10 (6 July 2007)

When I first heard that a fourth Die Hard movie was being made, I cringed. Whilst many of my friends tried to convince me otherwise, I always thought it would be an above average modern action movie, but not a good Die Hard movie. The whole concept of making a fourth Die Hard movie twelve years after the last one just further strengthens my belief that Hollywood has run out of original ideas; this is the summer of sequels and heavily laden source material movies after all.
The movie started off in a promising way with the introduction of McClane (Willis) in a scene with his daughter Lucy (Winstead), the dialogue in which reminding me of the McClane of old. By the time the first action scene roles around it still has the feel somewhat of the older Die Hard's with a good old fashioned shootout, culminating in an explosion. The subsequent conversation between McClane and his new sidekick Farrell (Long) reflecting on McClane's age and the fact he hasn't been in a situation like this for some time, was a nice way of mirroring within the film that the Die Hard franchise has been gone for a while. This is something that I felt could maybe have been played on a bit more, but unfortunately wasn't and for me this is where it stopped being a Die Hard film and just became another generic Bruce Willis action movie that he has been making for the past 10 years.
The script I felt had promise and in parts was indeed funny, but overall it didn't have the wit or charm of the previous instalments, despite some solid acting and enjoyable scenes between Willis and Long. The direction was very disjointed and confusing in places (notably one conversation between two characters where there must be 10-15 cuts and 5 different shot types) which I found distracting, but maybe was just me being too scrutinous.
The villains did not only not compare to previous Die Hard films but were pretty unbelievable and badly acted, with the lead villain Gabriel being played very wooden by Timothy Olyphant. This perhaps was not entirely his own fault due to his limited locations and surroundings, but his henchman that seemed to survive massive blunt force trauma at high speeds, falls from high heights and huge explosions with minor injuries were quite laughably unbelievable. Especially the parkour frenchman that was seemingly capable or running faster than bullets.
This air of ridiculous seemed to transpire to the later action scenes, that whilst being grand and impressive, were frankly just entirely unbelievable. The previous instalments did indeed have some quite outrageous scenes, but nothing compared to these. The charm of the previous ones were based around the fact that McClane was just your average guy that was put into these situations, never thinking himself a hero but always acting as one. In this film he seems more like an indestructible comic book super hero.
Overall this film just feels like a modern Bruce Willis action flick with the Die Hard title slapped on to make it a bigger draw and to gain more revenue. It is enjoyable in parts as long as you're not willing to take it seriously and if you can sit through the "war on terror" propaganda. If you're looking for a Die Hard movie though, watch or indeed watch again the original, instead of this watered down and censored summer "blockbuster".