Merrick again...

This is all really depressing.

There's not much more that I can say about this film that hasn't already been said in intros to previous reviews.

I fucking love DIE HARD - as a filmmaking attitude, and as a mythos - and I keep waiting for love to pour in for the new sequel.

Alas, it doesn't seem to be happening. Evidenced by this new look at the movie from J2theB (sounds like a George Lucas droid).


Here's his review...

Hi there...

Never written in before but such is my aching disappointment with this I feel obliged to put pen to paper. I clocked DH4 at the UK premiere last night. Les Wiseman, Bruce Willis et al were there to introduce it. Readers will be pleased to know that BW made a joke over the absence of "cursing" in the movie, to be fair that was the least of its problems.

Everything about it, bar one or two action set pieces (the tunnel scene in particular is pretty darned good), felt utterly derivative. Where JJ Abrahams made a decent stab of re-vamping the MI formula in MI3, Len Wiseman was clearly not up to this challenge. The claims Len made that they took the key elements of the franchise and updated them is simply not true. It felt like an extended episode of 24, it moves at pace but at the expense of logic or any meaningful characterization.

Whilst there are some self-referential nods to lift shafts, basements and walkie talkie banter with bad guys it all lacks grit, any sense of realism or any real tension. Indeed the dialogue is shockingly hokey (Kevin Smith is no actor by the way), the acting (as opposed to the action) poorly directed and the lines delivered awkwardly, almost to the point you actually feel a little embarrassed about it. The cyber geek side kick has a paint by numbers story arc, when he is not explaining the plot to the audience he is subjected to "What it means to be a hero" lectures from Bruce which come out of nowhere and are said with little provocation.

It seems they kept the intelligence levels proportionate to the movie's PG rating, which is totally unacceptable when this film has an adult fan base.

The villain who is supposed to be a logistical genius does some utterly stupid things and lacks any gravitas. The villains of the previous DHs felt like men, this guy felt like a boy and you don't send a boy to take on the Bruce.

The plot devices involving Bruce's daughter were perhaps the most shamefully unimaginative, in fact the whole way she was crow barred into the story line to increase the non-existent emotional tension was cringe worthy. When she is kidnapped she acts like a real hard ass for no other reason than she is John Mclanes daughter, it feels utterly unrealistic. Think back to when Holly was kidnapped in DH 1, she plotted and schemed with cunning guile to escape. Well in this replace "guile" with "head butting terrorists" and you have a fair idea of the film's idea of sophistication.

And since when was cyber terrorism every exciting? War Games probably, Enemy of the State just about, but this misses the target time after time. Wow they turn the traffic lights all to green and cause traffic mayhem (save when Bruce needs a car of course then the streets are empty), they turn off the power, they steal bank account numbers - yawn yawn yawn

It has been said before and I will say it again, explosions and glossy production values do not an action movie make. It should not be assumed that an audience will automatically suspend their disbelief or turn off their brains simply because they are promised big bangs and plenty of them

I hate to bitch coz I love Bruce and he does deliver some killer lines in this (some of which were right on the edge of racially prejudicial) but it is utter MTV, teen age, diet coke, Bad Boys II, Michael Bay bollocks from start to finish. Its the Godfather III of die hards ..... and then some as a great man once said.

J2theB