Die Hard 4.0 review

McToughie
Review by Vives Anunciacion

Die Hard 4.0
Directed by Len Wiseman
Starring Bruce Willis, Justin Long
PG 13/ 130 minutes
20th Century Fox
** ½ (2 ½ stars)

Seems like old times. It’s been twelve years since detective John McClane last appeared to shoot ‘em bad guys. He just keeps going.

On the Fourth of July weekend, computer hackers attack the main networks of the US infrastructure grid, shutting down its transportation, communications and power. Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) is on a routine assignment to bring computer hacker Matt Ferrel (Justin Long) to the FBI when McClane discovers that Ferrel is one of the hackers hired by a mysterious organization out to topple the US financial system.

As the federal government scrambles to restore order while figuring out who the perpetrators are, tough guy McClane and tech geek Ferrel emerge as the unlikely dynamic duo who will stop the terrorists’ plans at all costs, even risking the life of McClane’s daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Timothy Olyphant plays the hacker ringleader Thomas Gabriel.

I could have easily given it a higher score because, implausibility aside, it’s a decently made action flick, flying cars, jet fighters and all. Willis is so comfortable playing McClane it’s almost impossible to tell them apart. And Justin Long, more popularly known as the Mac guy in the Apple Mac ads, pleasantly doesn’t play the annoying sidekick. But this isn’t an acting movie, it’s an gun-enforced action flick reeking with nostalgia.

At more than two hours of almost non-stop chase, explosion and gun-shooting scenes, the movie’s real conceit is its main selling point: that the fourth Die Hard movie is an old fashioned 80s style action movie not much different in theme, in language and in politics from the last Die Hard, With a Vengeance.

What is wrong isn’t its un-use of computer effects to do real stunts by real stuntmen the way action movies were shot years ago. That’s actually a good thing, particularly the stunts by the French baddies doing parkour jumping.

What’s wrong is that its storyline belongs to the 90s, like a Dirty Harry movie under the Reagan administration, where the bad guys want to overrun America as if it’s the only country in the world. Its sentiments are old-school, to the point that in order to annoy his nemesis, McClane insults Gabriel by calling his girlfriend as “another dead Asian hooker bitch.” Those lines belong to the pre-Politically Correct world, implying how “old world” the mindset of the writers are.

Die Hard 4.0 makes sure it’s a throwback to the old Die Hard movies by making quick references to them all the time. That doesn’t make it a classic movie series, it only means DH 4.0 is related to the old ones. And if the old stuff works just as fine today, that’s okay. It just means it’s a tried and tested formula.

Been there, done that.