Movie Reviews: Die Hard 4.0 (2007)

Intro.

Almost 20 years since his first adventure, some 10 years since his last, Bruce Willis returns as John McClane: wise-cracking maverick with a need to shoot and be shot at, wearing his sweaty, dirty wife beater, foiling the bad guys plans and saving the world. And for what? A pat on the back, and multiple gunshot wounds.

All in a days work.

Plot Summary.
This time, McClane is fighting in the digital age - subroutines, modems, the internet, hackers and so on. To begin with, McClane is asked to act as transport for a high-profile hacker: Matthew Farrell (played by Justin Long) - a geeky, stuttering nervous, digital genius, a suspect in the recent unauthorised digital entries into US government networks. However, things turn from what seemed like a routine chauffeuring job to plain, damn, bad as someone tries to remove Farrell from the picture, as well as having already killed several of the other suspects.

After some fantastic action scenes; "killing" a helicopter with a car (pictured below), exploding apartments, and using a fire extinguisher as remote TNT, McClane and Farrell manage to make it back to government headquarters; here it becomes apparent that Farrell has no direct involvement in the current days events; which include the shutting down of power, gas, information flow and so on, but is pivotal to saving the day.
McClane and Farrell bond, with Farrell asking how McClane can be that guy; the hero. McClane then says that he doesn't want to and that if someone else could he would leave them to it. Farrell still can't understand how McClane can be so calm after being shot at so many times, but McClane persists it tends to happen quite a lot. Farrell and McClane compliment themselves extremely well, and in several situations both have to use their talents (Farrell’s brains and McClane’s muscle, as Gabriel (the baddy - played by Timothy Olyphant) puts it: "John, you're a Timex watch in a digital age.") at the same time to overcome a situations; McClane’s face-off with Mia (Maggie Q), while Farrell worked to undo what she had done for example.
It soon becomes a personal vendetta between McClane and Gabriel as McClane kills Mai Lihn, who is also Olyphant’s love interest. Gabriel then seeks out and kidnaps Lucy McClane (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who has since had a strained relationship with her father and his over protectiveness and spying on her when she's out fraternizing with her boyfriend.
With help from the Warlock (Kevin Smith) they locate Gabriel, it is now a race against the clock before Gabriel shuts down all power across the country and escapes with millions in digital cash. During the persuit Farrell is also kidnapped and McClane takes down a F-14 fighter plane, due to Gabriel’s control of communications and his targeting of McClane’s pursuiting truck.

In a final showdown, McClane, already shot once in the shoulder, is held at gunpoint by Gabriel who proclaims that he will shoot Farrell, Lucy and then McClane himself to add insult to injury. In a final super-bad-ass moment, McClane pushes the gun into his own gunshot wound and shouts "Yippee-ki-yay Motherf***er!" - shooting himself - with the bullet going through his wounded shoulder and into Gabriel. With Farrell stepping up and taking out Gabriel’s final goon, whom was hold Lucy hostage.

The film ends on a nice, rather chessy, note. With Willis acting as the go-between between Farrell and Lucy, as the two ask McClane if he/she "said anything about me". Naturally, McClane recieves little more than a pat on the back, he does however tell Farrell that he is that guy; the hero, that he was so far from at the beginning of the film.

Final Thoughts.
This film is a fantastic action film (suprisingly) brilliantly acted. That's not to say that there are particularly bad actors/actresses in this film, or that the previous Die Hard films were badly acted but, usually, action films leave little or no room for actors to show off their range of talents. Here however, Bruce Willis, Timothy Olyphant, Justin Long and Mary Elizabeth Winstead were all excellent. With Justin Long and Timothy Olyphant shining. The interaction between Long and Willis was very natural - with Long playing the nerdy "why is it happening to me" hacker to perfection and Willis playing a bald(er), although less wise cracking, naturally more mature, John McClane. Some may not like McClane in this movie, he's played different in this film as he was in the first two films, the third showing a transition. But then, that was 20 years ago, and McClane, like Willis, has aged.

Although I'm a little biased toward Mary Elizabeth Winstead, it's not without reason. Yes she's beautiful, but she can act too. Previously, Mary has played the screamer in slasher films - and was even being hailed as the next scream-queen. However, here she was so far from that it was unreal. She really was her fathers daughter. She was like a female version of John McClane in "Die Hard", at one point - when a normal person may be thinking this is the last chance to talk to their father before they die - Gabriel offers the radio to Lucy, asking her to talk to McClane because he can't. Instead of proclaiming her love for her father and saying how sorry she was, she instead tells him that "There's only 5 of them left" - classic.

Action-wise. It's pretty impressive. Also, knowing that Willis performed a high percentage of stunts himself makes the visuals all the more impressive. The most notable being the F-14 sequence, where at one point, McClane is, what can only be described as, surfing the plane as it swirls around. He then jumps off of the plane to which he is chased by an explosion. Great stuff.

Dialogue was also impressive. Everyone was awaiting that famous one-liner, and when it was delivered it was worth the wait. As well as that ever famous like, others returned too; "It seemed a good idea at the time" being a favourite of mine, after he shoots himself to shoot Gabriel.

• Overall, if you want to go to see this movie for realism. Don't go.
• If you go and see this movie expecting to see the John McClane from Die Hard 1 and 2, and to a lesser extent, 3. You may be disappointed.
• If, however, you want to see a brilliantly acted, modernized John McClane - who takes a little longer to get up, is a little older, and has...erm, no hair - then go. And enjoy it for what it truly is.

A fabulous action movie.

4 out of 5