So there we were watching Die Hard 4.0. Immediately I have a question: why the 4.0? Why not just 4? Probably because the film has a lot of technology in it, and you know technology often has 'point something'. The publicity people for the film haven't exactly got off on the right foot with me here. The film starts off with some techie type people who are obviously up to no good. A woman who looks a bit like Jessica Ennis is typing away and hacks into a government computer before a bunch of bad guys blow up the house where a dude she's hacking with is working. The government aren't happy their computer was hacked into, so they want to interview all the hackers that might be capable of doing it, so John McCane is tasked to bring in one of those hackers. Got it?
From then on the film is a series of set-piece action sequences linked together by scenes in which McClane his hacker buddy (Matt) travel between locations. There's a car chase in a tunnel, a shoot out in an apartment block, a car crashing into a helicopter, an SUV dangling down a lift shaft, a jet fighter versus an articulated lorry and plenty of bullets flying around without anyone ever running out of ammunition. This takes place over the space of about a days, during which time McClane doesn't appear to eat or sleep. The point of Die Hard is that McClane is meant to be an ordinary cop, not Superman or Chuck Norris. In fact, why call this film Die Hard at all? Just because it's an action film with Bruce Willis in it? Apart from that it's got nothing at all to do with the original film and looks more like a feature length episode of 24, several years after the concept of 24 got old.
Comparisons between the bad guys in Die Hard and Die Hard 4.0 leave the latter floundering at sea. The bad guy here is some utterly wet computer 'genius'; the worst thing he manages to do to McClane s daughter is slap her in the face and when his girlfriend is killed he simply brushes his hand across his table in mild disgust. What was his motivation? Something about proving to the government that he's right? Also where did he get all the money from to finance this criminal enterprise? Did he steal it? No one at the FBI seems interested in catching him for that though. And where do the endless French goons come from? And why are they all French?! Sigh.
The film does have a few good points. The relationship between McClane and the hacker kid is quite well done. There's a generation gap thing going on between them in that McClane doesn't understand any technology while Matt doesn't do guns and violence. They're a good double act and thematically the kid is playing the part of a younger audience who might not have seen any of the Die Hard films. The action scenes should be applauded for their audaciousness if nothing else. I would have loved to be in the script review meeting where they agreed to go with the scene that involves a jet fighter literally facing off against a truck. It's a scene that's so silly the film-makers deserve praise for having the balls to keep it in the final cut.
Die Hard 4.0 is an absolute mess of a film, the kind of thing that teenage media students would probably end up making if they had a $100 million budget. It has nothing to do with the original Die Hard and - despite providing good entertainment value by being so over-the-top - it was a disappointment.
No comments:
Post a Comment