It’s been a dozen years since we last saw NYPD detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) trying hard not to die on screen. He still the same stoic, modest old-school guy, but it’s a new world, so he gets a tech-savvy sidekick played by Justin Long, whose face is familiar from a series of Apple computer commercials. He plays a genius hacker who doesn’t use Macs but is one of those movie characters you now see all the time who conveniently knows how to work any electronic device immediately upon spotting it. McClane, asked to bring him to DC in connection with some anomalies in the government’s security system, ends up rescuing him from his apartment in Camden, NJ. The city’s even more dangerous than usual when a team of heavily armed thugs is trying to kill you.
In DC, the duo try to figure out what’s going on, and where, as a new breed of villains use their computer skills to create chaos and strike fear across the nation. Timothy Oliphant and Maggie Q play the pair leading the hack attack. She doubles as a martial-arts expert. Thematically, the movie recalls the techno-paranoia thriller Enemy of the State, whose writer, David Marconi, gets a story credit here. Underworld’s Len Wiseman directs.
There’s little that’s remarkable about this fourth Die Hard movie (the first to be rated PG-13 instead of R) except that it works. True, Oliphant’s supposed motive is a weak explanation for his willingness to wreak such havoc. And even McClane marvels at all the people so willing to follow. Do you call 1-800-Henchmen, he asks, which is about as clever as the dialogue gets. The detective himself should have been dead several times over; these enemies of the state are absurdly competent at all the computer stuff but can’t shoot straight. At least once, a henchman passes up the chance to shoot McClane point blank.
But if installment four doesn’t reinvent the action genre, it at least follows its conventions without messing things up. The pacing is quick. The action scenes are unsurprisingly set on highways and in large buildings, but McClane finds creative, unique ways to take out the bad guys. The climax is a truck-jet fighter battle that’s ridiculous, but not without entertainment value. Willis and Long have a nice chemistry, too. They talk enough to give the flavor of their characters (Long’s is fortunately less smarmy than in the Apple commercials) without there being overly silly banter.
McClane isn’t flashy but gets the job done. Even if it’s far from realistic, so does this movie.
IMDB link
link to “A Farewell to Arms,” the Wired magazine article credited as the basis for the movie’s story
reviewed 7/1/07
No comments:
Post a Comment