Die Hard 4.0: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

Die Hard 4.0: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

8/10

Starring

Bruce Willis

Justin Long

Timothy Olyphant

Maggie Q

Directed by Len Wiseman

The bad guys have returned 12 years after the last (Simon Gruber), and this time they decide to take John’s daughter, so he parks an SUV up their asses, takes out their helicopter with a police car and went all “Yippee kai yay, motherfu@#er” all over the whole film.

If you have not watched this wonderful addition to this beautiful action film franchise, then you are missing out, as I have said before in my Die Hard 2 review, Jack Bauer has nothing on this guy, in fact he wishes he could be as bad ass as this guy (John McClane). My favorite part in this movie is where Bruce Willis got his ass hand over to him by Maggie Q then he went all crazy on her.

The Die Hard franchise made it to the 21^st Century with Die Hard 4 and McClane was head over heels on top of the situation. This movie is so good that it is hard to believe it was made 12 years after the last Die Hard, because after Die Hard 3, I felt the producers have nothing else to add that will make this franchise a most remember, but then we are introduced to McClane as a father of an adult daughter and Daddy McClane don’t play, and Daughter McClane is just as crazy as Daddy-O.

The movie is based on a screenplay by Mark Bomback from a story written by David Marconi that was in turn based on a John Carlin’s Wired magazine article “A Farewell to Arms”about a cyber attack on the United States. The attack procedure is known as “fire sale” where the countries transportation, telecommunication & financials and utilities infrastructure system is being attacked or in other terms being taken over by the bad guys.

The story follows McClane, who was in the wrong place again as he got involved in modern day warfare where the criminals use computers mostly to get the job done.

John McClane (Bruce Willis) is sent to pick up a known hacker Matt Farrell (Justin Long) and McClane happened to arrive in time to save Farrell from being killed. But this didn’t stop the “terrorist” group leader (Timothy Olyphant) and his right hand girl (Maggie Q) from launching a cyber attack on the US.

As McClane was moving Farrell the group behind the “fire sale” attack still go after Farrell, which in turn means after McClane and then a showdown begins as McClane daughter got kidnapped and now McClane is pissed and will do anything to get her back.

As the series follows McClane as he ages so did the length at which McClane will go to bring the bad guys down and finally after 19 years a bad guy that was as good as Hans Gruber, making this film the 2^nd best in the franchise following the first Die Hard in 1988.

The movies cinematography is head above shoulders higher than the 3 movies before it, so was the CGI use and visual effects (especially in the tunnel scene). Also the production cost was 20 million more than the last Die Hard movie (which cost 90 million), but made like 30 million less than the last (which made above 360 million) in the box office; making this movie a commercial success, and it was a critical acclaim (making this and the first the only critical acclaim out of the five film series).

The acting in this movie is wonderful, Justin Long was impressive and so was all the other supporting cast in the movie, making this movie the best when it comes casting/acting. Timothy Olyphant too was impressive in this movie, and as said above this was wonderful to see, since Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) from the first movie, every other villain had been unable to step into his shoes.

A nice movie, great setup wonderful screenplay and a most watch, after this was the latest Die Hard released in 2013, A Good Day to Die Hard.