I have another name for the latest chapter of the 20 year old franchise: "Die Hard '4' The Children"... A squeaky clean version of what began as a gritty, violent movie saga back in 1988. Bruce Willis dusts off the John McClane character for another foray into battling sauve terrorists with bad accents. Before the movie even begins - You get a giddy feeling that something fun is about to begin. The classic 20th Century Fox logo blares loudly before suffering an unexpected power outage. Fox CEO Tom Rothman can't pay the electricity bills after wasting millions making the Silver Surfer all Silvery for the Crap-tastic Four sequel. Brilliant!
Willis saunters onscreen, a cool calm before the anticipated storm. Turns out he's back in the bad books with his wife... Not like he risked his neck to save her life in the first two movies - It was probably because he accidentally left the toilet seat up one too many times or something. "I know you killed all those thugs for me honey, but do you really love me anymore?" Instead, we meet his college age daughter - And get a sinking suspicion she'll play the 'family member in distress' for this round.
Timothy Olyphant and Maggie Q are the terrorists du jour. Wait! No funny accent? At least they dress snappy. Turns out these terrorists are *gasp* cyber-terrorists. Olyphant does this buggy thing with his eyes that bothers the hell out of me... Like when you notice somebody chewing with their mouth open, and it grates on your nerves. The guy's a great actor... Just stop the Marty Feldman impersonation! Enter Jusin Long - the computer hacker that all the bad-guys want dead. Willis gets tangled in this crazy web rather quickly in the movie, and we're treated to a clausterphobic gun battle in Long's tiny apartment. The action was classic Die Hard - great sense of overwhelming odds and McClane's resourceful retaliation. I kinda wish I saw the End Credits after this scene... As the rest of the movie shifts in a radical departure from the Die Hard theme.
Remember "The Last Action Hero?". The crazy action scenes and silly dialogue? I began to think this 'Die Hard' was actually a riff on this Schwarteneggar bomb. Issac Newton takes a nap, as all Laws of Physics get ignored for the dumb-down effect of mindless action. Then you have the evil hackers... who somehow can control all matters of everday life - I began to expect a toaster or ceiling fan would try and attack Willis and Long. Very stupid.
There's this one scene in an underground tunnel full of cars... I won't spoil it, but the lapses of reason for the sake of the script just make everything sloppy and ridiculous.