Before I say anything about Die Hard 4, I just want to remind everyone that anything that has anything to do with computers in the movie serves no purpose other than to drive the plot and to provide for some surprisingly effective comic relief. There is tons and tons of nonsense about hacking into this and hacking into that and how only 9 guys in the world could do such and such with a laptop and blah blah blah blah. Don’t take the time to try to figure out exactly what they’re talking about, even if you’re a computer expert (especially if you’re a computer expert), because it’s just going to distract you from the rest of the movie, which is a pretty powerful argument that there is still a place for an old-school NYPD officer in the 21st century.
Let’s review, shall we? Die Hard is still among the dwindling list of movie franchises where the original movie is still the best one. Die Hard 2 was a cartoonish mess, and part 3, despite essentially plagiarizing the first Dirty Harry movie, was not the same thriller as the original but was still a great action movie. There have been many complains about casting Justin Long alongside Bruce Willis as his sidekick in this movie, because he’s so well-known as the guy from the Apple Computer commercials. Maybe I watch too many movies and not enough TV, but to me he will always be known as the phenomenally idiotic Darry Jenner from Jeepers Creepers. Good God those movies were awful…
So this time around, McClane has moved up in the world from reckless, irresponsible New York Cop to reckless, irresponsible absentee father who has little to do with his teenage daughter’s life until some jerk drives her home and gets a little too pushy with her. John saves her from getting groped by some meathead, but she’s still pretty unappreciative. Their relationship hasn’t been so great over the years. Soon John is called to duty to pick up some kid named Matt Ferrell, who is on a short list of computer super-nerds wanted by the U.S. government due to a recent glitch in the national security computer systems.
John thinks little of the assignment until a high-tech assassination attempt is made on the kid, and he discovers that he’s not the only person trying to track him down. It seems that everyone else on that short list has been executed by some shady organization, and John has to keep his cool trying to figure out who and why while they’re trying to kill him and while, in the meantime, they manage to kidnap his daughter.
There is tons of great action in the movie, although detractors can easily call attention to the fact that the plot-line is clearly designed to set the stage for the next action pieces. Personally, I thought the action pieces were awesome, so I could really care less if there isn’t exactly an Oscar-worthy script underneath it all. There is also the issue of the epic over-the-topness of some of the action pieces, such as the pilot of the fighter jet who can’t seem to hit a lumbering semi-truck, but can pilot his machine around under freeway overpasses, dodging bridges and whatnot.
John McClane and a walkie-talkie - one of the best action movie duos ever.
But again, I feel like the over-the-topness, while not a huge part of the original movie, was introduced in part 2, explored a bit in part 3, and now has developed to a point where it is one of the most appealing parts of the movie. Put it this way – there is a scene in the movie where McClane takes down a helicopter, and if you are unimpressed with how he does it (and his reaction, which I would argue is one of the funniest parts of the whole movie), then you’re either in the wrong frame of mind or this is just not your kind of movie.
Justin Long didn’t have much to do in the film except crack jokes and pop out his handy roll-up keyboard and hack into anything that needed hacking within a few seconds, although he didn’t detract from the movie as much as you would expect, given his iconography. Kevin Smith is purely hilarious as Long’s super-geek buddy, and later the two teamed up again with Zack and Miri Make A Porno, in which Long was the star of one of the movie’s funniest scenes. Timothy Olyphant is perfect as the movie’s main villain, Thomas Gabriel. He’s a little too clean-cut and flawlessly dressed and groomed, but he looks like a cross between Christian Slater and a young Jack Nicholson, and that’s not a bad place to be if you’re a Die Hard villain. It’s just too bad that he’s saddled with ancient action clichés like “You have no idea who I am and what I’m capable of…”
Nice try, Maggie. You're nice to look at but your believability factor is through the floor...
But the biggest problem with the casting is Maggie Q as Mai, Gabriel’s crazy hot assistant. She’s not only a super-genius computer hacker who can bring down national communication mainframes with a few strokes of the keyboard, but she’s also a martial arts expert who, if Jason Statham and Jet Li were in this movie alongside Bruce Willis, she could hold them all off for a while, too. Hell, she might even have the pure, unadulterated ass-kicking know-how to make Steven Seagal bleed his own blood. Can you imagine?
Although if I can make one small complaint, the climactic action sequence at the end of the movie was so screwed up I couldn’t believe it. It takes place on freeways and roads and whatnot, and in nearly every shot there were cars parked all over the road, I guess to give the illusion that it was taking place on a regular day of traffic, except that without exception not a single car had a driver or was even moving. Even though I loved the movie, I don’t remember ever seeing a major action sequence in a big-budget movie so badly botched. The villain’s main plot also falls apart pretty thoroughly (his plan to download the country’s financial data from a “backup” location is feared to throw the nation into irreversible chaos – what does “backup” mean again, exactly?), but this is otherwise a nearly perfect summer action blockbuster.
4 Beans out of 5.
