Saturday, August 25, 2007

Movie review - "Die Hard 4.0" (2007) **

Big explosions, cartoon stunts (falling out of a helicopter and off a plane just gets you a scratch), snazzy visual styles, silly mistakes:it's a bright idea to have all electronics, power, etc shut down in the US, but where's the human stakes? It's annoying, sure, but no lives are threatened (cf the first two Die Hards). They try to fix it by throwing in McLane's daughter at the end, but that should have been in the first act not the third (Justin Long means nothing to him - how about making him his son in law or son or something?)

Tim Olyphant is fine as the baddie and Maggie Q very strong as his sidekick. But the references to the first film (eg an FBI agent called "Special Agent Johnson", McLane's daughter taking the name "Genero" until the end when she becomes "McLane") only serve to remind the viewer what a better, cleverer film the original was.

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