Die Hard 4.0 (2007)

Posted on February 15, 2013 Updated on January 16, 2015

I am a huge fan of the original Die Hard movie starring Bruce Willis, which came out while I was at university and with which I was pretty obsessed at the time as it was a whole new, different type of action movie. None of the inevitable sequels have matched up to the original of course: I tended to like the second one (Die Hard 2: Die Harder) better than most people did and the third (Die Hard With A Vengeance) slightly less, but that just closed the gap between them rather than actually changed their respective rankings.

Nonetheless, I was still very disappointed to see just how abjectly poor the reviews of the latest instalment (the inanely-titled A Good Day To Die Hard) have been, in which practically all the hallmarks of the series have apparently been stripped away and forgotten. And one of the damning reviews of the new film especially caught my eye with its extra sideways swipe against the previous film in the franchise with its comment that as poor as the new film was, “it’s better than 4.0” – which gave me pause. I remembered liking that film; again, no match for the original film and still the last among sequels until the 2013 instalment, but in my mind’s eye I still thought of it as a decent action film and a solid franchise entry that hadn’t done too much harm to the John McClane character.

Had I been wrong? Only a couple of hours with the DVD would be able to tell… Read the rest of this entry »