Directed by:
Len WisemanScreenplay:
Mark BombackComposer:
Marco BeltramiCast:
Bruce Willis, Timothy Olyphant, Justin Long, Maggie Q, Cliff Curtis, Jonathan Sadowski, Kevin Smith, Cyril Raffaelli, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Sung Kang (more)VOD (4)
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John McClane takes on an Internet-based terrorist organization who is systematically shutting down the United States. (20th Century Fox)
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Reviews (12)
The story is fast-paced, the action scenes are perfectly shot and sometimes even inventive (the tunnel scene), and the old boy Bruce Willis is – surprisingly – still the same great John McClane, who holds the film together and provides it with the right ironic wit. I would edit the last third of the film a bit and shorten the whole thing by some five minutes, but otherwise I have no complaints, apart from the fallen Capitol in the trailer.
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"Yippie-ki-yay, motherfu..." A solid action picture? You bet it is. But isn’t it a little too little, in view of the quality that the previous parts had to offer? Not really, no... One year short of the twentieth anniversary of the release of Die Hard, we get part four. And although, in order to get a lower rating, John McClane has gone a little soft, due to his age he wears a hoody instead of an undershirt and in the action scenes he gets a lot of help from the editor, he continues successfully to reel out great lines, shoot, bleed, get a good kicking and flatten everybody like a road-roller in the end. It’s surprising that Len Wiseman, who until now hasn’t manged to film even a mediocre movie, has pulled himself together at last. It’s true, that it’s a bit creaky in places, the screenplay is dumb (especially on the technical side), the end way over the top and camera filters just everywhere... But somewhere deep down under everything you can clearly feel the spirit of the good old Die Hards. It all rattles along nicely, action making way for more action, not many dead moments, John’s little helper doesn’t matter at all (quite the opposite), the action sequences are mostly inventive and the baddies are excellent. Especially the charismatic and nicely flaunty Maggie Q. What more could you want from a summer action blockbuster that turn off your brain and let yourself get sucked in by the return of one of the action legends of the silver screen? Even all these years later this series has managed to maintain its high standard in terms of quality, but it is dragged back from the very top rung by a sequence lasting less than ten minutes with John in a semi truck on a freeway intersection versus a fighter jet. Something that looks like an upgraded version of a notoriously ridiculous scene from the B-grade Rambo III look even worse in the middle of this A-grade action movie. On the other hand, the very end of the movie is very satisfying when the main villain performed nicely by Timothy Olyphant goes out in style. Many of us were hoping, few of us really believed it would happen, but it did. This isn’t the best of the Die Hards - it’s the worst, but it’s still above-average good, although it turned John into precisely what made him different from all the other action heroes. We can at least be pleased for that. If for no other reason then because we aren’t often treated to good old eighties-nineties style action pictures very often any more. If things carry on as they have been, we’ll be getting part twelve in a couple of years’ time.
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The nightmare of every IT specialist, or rather, the best comedy of their lives, depending on how you look at it. Wiseman totally blew it. It's definitely an above average action film, but that's about it unfortunately. If I were a hardcore fan of the Die Hard franchise, I’d wonder where are the cynical, dry wisecracks typical of John McClane, and where are the plot twists that worked so well in the second and third films. Wiseman's film is closest to the first in its directness, but unlike it, it lacks tension, because Willis has a skeleton made of titanium and wouldn't be stopped even if a Boeing fell on him. In other words, the almost comic-book exaggeration kills the movie. This is especially true of McClane's adversaries, a dashing guy, undoubtedly Spider-Man's older brother, who falls 10 metres from a helicopter onto concrete and it's all good. But that's nothing against Maggie Q – you can punch her several times with your fist (without breaking her make-up), slam her against the wall several times (her make-up still sticks) and then hit her with a car at full speed and she won't even flinch and will still kick your ass. Sorry, Wiseman, but I'm not interested in Aeon Flux 2, I'm getting a bit bored of these feminist superheroes.
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I was a little weary, but yippee, John is back in full strength. Even more wisecracks than before, he’s full of laughs and eliminates baddies one after another. The story is, well in short, fine. Technological advances haven’t hurt John as much as I had feared (what’s more it prompted a couple more wisecracks). Olyphant is one of the best villains to Die Hard and I must say that I understood his motives. I would also be pissed if someone did to me what they did to him. And he had a nice shirt, too. Justin Long was also a pleasant surprise and he makes a pretty decent sidekick (I bet you can’t pronounce the Czech equivalent: “přicmrndávač"). Maggie Q was gorgeous, as always. And if John weren’t John, she would have won, same as the French Spiderboy Cyril Raffaelli who put on a nice show in the little room he was given. Live Free or Die Hard worked out just fine. Wiseman did some great work and you can tell that he’s a fan. Despite all of his blue filters and logical nonsense, you just have to forgive him for that. And maybe. Just maybe I would like to see a Die Hard 5.0. Hope to see you again, John.
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Poor John McTiernan will have to come to terms with the fact that his cult classic original and the veritable watershed moment of the third installment will remain in the shadow of the fantastic even-numbered films. When I once read in an interview with Bruce Willis that the screenwriters drew inspiration from the TV series 24, I had no idea that I would pretty much witness a feature-length version of it. McClane has problems with his daughter, he advances in eliminating the villains almost exactly according to their hierarchy – and he is such an amazing action hero that I couldn't help but gape. And after the tired third installment, I expected anything but this. I was looking for a lot of humor and fan nods in the fourth Die Hard, but I also got John as an indestructible dinosaur who beats up women without hesitation and swears at them with all his might. And the viewer feels the desire to cheer out loud. The threat this time is perfectly terrifying and chilling at certain moments. Timothy Olyphant adds to this with his delightful performance, his sarcastic remarks full of anger raised my adrenaline, and when he tells McClane that he will destroy his life and kill his loved ones, I instinctively cowered in my seat. Moreover, the connection between the old fox and the young, restrained rebel works, everything is as it should be. Although there are occasionally overly calm moments in those two hours, I still have to convert those 90% into five stars. This matador will not be ashamed of his comeback.
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