July 4th Weekend Closes With A Bang In Die Hard 4

I see dead people: Bruce Willis racks up the body count again as John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard.

Now, if it seems like this Blog post is a year too late, that's because it is. I'm a huge fan of the Die Hard series and like about one of every four movies Bruce Willis makes so when Live Free or Die Hard was released last year it seemed like a slam dunk that I would see it. But, for some reason I kept forgetting about it. Even at Christmas time, I meant to get the DVD and watch it but I forgot again. So finally, I sat down this weekend and saw the fourth installment in the John McClane saga.

Willis reprises his role of hard nosed cop John McClane being the wrong guy at the wrong time with all the right moves. Still in good shape and believable in his action sequences, Willis brings back the smart ass wisecracks and lived in downtrodden feel to his signature character. Both Willis and the writers add a few grace notes to underscore how McClane's life tends to be crappy between Die Hard events. McClane is as easy to relate to as the first movie thanks to Willis performance and willingness to age the character with the audience. The "analog cop against the digital age" angle is worked in nicely as well.

But no ones going to confuse Live Free or Die Hard with Macbeth, so how good does stuff blow up? Particularly now that the series has gone on long enough to graduate from exploding minatures and matte shots to full blown CGI. Pretty well, actually. The plot follows McClane as he brings in a cyber geek (an energized Justin Long) for questioning as terrorists take over all of America's financial, security and public services via computer. McClane and the cyber geek try to track down the terrorists while the government is overloaded dealing with a panciked public. To make it timely, the "fire sale" (an attack pattern of disabling the support structures listed before) happens on the 4th of July. The terrorists, led by a guy that looks like Ryan Seacrest and the Asian girl from Mission Impossible 3, have a small army of mercenaries and other computer geniuses to pull off their plan.

This is all just an excuse to see our favorite unwitting anti terrorist expert to get bloodied and bruised while pulling off impossible stunts. Die Hard 4 delivers with a tense pace and overblown action sequences that include ground battles with helicopters or fighter planes, elevator shaft mayhem and-being a modern movie-lots of people typing on keypads furiously. McClane jumps the shark one time after another, but the filmmakers know if plausibility was a factor they wouldn't have gotten past the first movie, so it's not that relevant. The supporting actors are all strong including a cameo by Kevin Smith (Clerks). Live Free or Die Hard is a successful dust off of classic Action film strategies and credit is due to director Len Wiseman for moving the story fast enough to avoid deep thought or boredom. A pure adrenalin rush, i'm definitely going to watch this one again.