Die Hard 4.0 (2007) – Welcome to the Party Pal

It was the summer vacation of 1989-1990. We children would contribute one rupee and would rent those old big video cassette. The choice was clear. We wanted English action movies or new Hindi movies. An occasional ghost movie would do but the most we had was Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan and Jean-Claude Van Damme. We had no idea what was going in Hollywood and the movies we rented were on the recommendations of the Video library owner.

One day somebody rented “Die Hard” and we were mesmerized. Action, shooting, fighting, explosion, it had everything we wanted. We cheered and laughed as John McClaine went on knocking off the bad guys. That day I was introduced to Bruce Willis.

“Die Hard” is one of my favorite Action movie. Another one was “Speed”. Both movies had action-a-minute with a good story. Few years later, when Die Hard 2 came, it had action but the action was not as exciting as the first one. The third suffered the law of the sequel and had a stupid story and not so great action but all the three movies were hard-core action movies and much much better than the so-called action movies. There was no romantic angle, no parallel story, no teary flashbacks. Just kickass action.

Naturally I was excited about the fourth in the series, “Die Hard 4.0″. An unusual name if you take the 4.0, the movie does not come close to the first one and still Its good, really good.

The story starts with John McClaine spying on his daughter. He is asked to pick up a hacker, Matt Farrell and escort him to Washington DC, a routine job. In his house, an attempt on the hacker’s life forces them on the run. America is under cyber attack when the network in the security agencies and financial market start crashing. At the same time, hackers die mysteriously when harddisk infected with virus explode. Now in a crippled country where everything is controlled by computers is in the hand of a disgruntled computer expert.

John McClaine along with Matt Farrell has to save America from a certain destruction. Also John McClaine’s daughter is kidnapped by the villain. The plot is little confusing in terms of the computers terminology used but then you can ignore it for the adrenalin pumping action.

The strong point of Die Hard series is the fast paced action and the one liners. The first movie had a lot of those. Even the second movie had those. The third had a lot of those but the impact was lost. The fourth too has good action and good one liners. Some of them repeated from previous movies. When John McClaine makes a police car fly and hit a helicopter, he is asked that he really brought down a helicopter with a car. He looks tired and answers “I ran out of bullets”

Matt Farrell is played by Justin Long and provides ok comic relief.

Maggie Q plays Mai Lihn, the kung Fu sidekick of the villain. She jumps and kicks but dies quite early. Mary Winstead plays Lucy McClaine, John McClaine’s daughter. She is ok.

Timothy Olyphant plays Thomas Gabriel, the villain, the mastermind behind the Fire sale. In the Die Hard Series, as much as John McClaine is important, the villain has to be equally important. DH-1 had Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber, DH-2 had Col Stuart and DH-3 Jeremy Irons as Simon Gruber playing Simon say with McClaine. Here Timothy is not as menacing as the villain but he is far more intelligent than all villains. He is strong in brains but not in body hence the climax has him dying very fast.

Finally Bruce Willis plays what he plays best. Detective John McClaine. Though quite old, he still runs, fights and mouths the best one liners. DH series cannot be complete without Bruce Willis. Although the age has started showing on him, the action still shows like in the first film.

The movie is directed by Len Wiseman who directed the “Underground”. I am tempted to watch “Underground” now.

All in all, Die Hard 4.0 is an excellent action movie but still not a classic like the first in the series. Compared to the other in the series, this comes a second best.

A worthy watch if you like action and Bruce Willis. In the end he does say;

Yippee-ki-yay, motherf***er

Rating: 8/10