Jennifer Fallon - the Official Site

Anybody going off to see number four in a movie franchise, usually knows what they’re in for, and Die Hard 4.0 (presumably because adding a decimal point makes our over-50 hero more hip) is no exception.

Master of being in the wrong place, wrong time, Jack McCLane (Bruce Willis), just happens to be the nearest senior detective in the vicinity of a hacker the FBI wants brought in for questioning, following a hack into their high-security cyber-terrorism unit. McCLane is nearby, because in his spare time he’s taken to stalking his college-student daughter, putting the brakes on her love life by popping up in car parks at inappropriate times and embarrassing her into disowning him.

McCLane arrives to collect the hacker, Matthew Farrell (Justin Long), only to walk into a shootout, as a whole lot of bad guys try to dispatch Farrell to that great mainframe in the sky. So of course, our hero steps in, saves Farrell and heads to Washington with his young charge in tow, amid a backdrop of ever-increasing technology malfunctions, perpetrated by suave uber-baddie, Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant). Deep down, Gabriel’s not really a bad guy, it turns out, despite his psychopathic willingness to murder every minion he no longer has a use for. He’s doing this to prove that the US’s entire computer infrastructure is vulnerable, and helping himself to a few squillion dollars in the process, as compensation for his trouble.

The Die Hard movies made their name with a tough hero who lets nothing get in the way of saving his family. His daughter Lucy (May Elizabeth Winstead), is the family member in peril this time around, when Gabriel kidnaps her, in order to force McClane to back off. And as per the formula, nothing gets in McClane’s way — not even the laws of physics — on his shoot-em-up, blow-em-up, car-crashing, truck-destroying, freeway-mangling way to saving the world.

The stunts in this film are spectacular to the point of absurdity. The plot is really there just give the special effects guys something to hang their stunts on. The bad guy, is, like all Die Hard baddies, ruthless and rather cute in homicidal maniac sort of way. The addition to Mac-commercial hero Long as Farrell (typecasting much?) adds a cutie for the next generation to relate to, and everybody is going to make bucket loads of cash from a tried and true formula.

Die Hard 4.0 is a bit of a guilty pleasure and requires nothing more of the audience than they sit back and enjoy the ride.