The ‘daddy’ of blockbusters

It’s taken a balding, battle-worn 52-year-old to set the summer blockbuster season truly alight, writes movie blogger Carl Jones.

Bruce Willis is back in business as his most famous character, New York cop John McClane. And Die Hard 4.0 is unquestionably the star of the big-budget season so far.

It’s almost 20 years since McClane’s first gung-ho escapade in a besieged Hollywood high-rise building, when Willis wrote his name on the Hollywood A-list by tackling a snarling Alan Rickman in that famous grimy white vest.

It’s been ditched this time in favour of a rather less figure-hugging tattered green sweatshirt, but Brucie shows he’s still more than a match for the torrent of arduous action set pieces hurled his way.
This time cyber-terrorist Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant), who has an axe to grind against the American government, stands between him and a peaceful middle-aged existence.
The White House ignored Gabriel’s warnings about shortfalls in national security, so he’s dishing out the sternest of punishments by proving the point - using his hi-tech wizardry to systematically shut down the entire country’s infrastructure including power, telecoms and financial institutions.
As chaos descends, Gabriel and his sexy sidekick Mai Lihn (Maggie Q) take advantage of the mounting confusion by siphoning off millions of dollars. Only a handful of top-level cyber-geeks have the brains to break their online stranglehold - but they’re being murdered faster than the FBI can pluck them to safety.
Fortunately for one of them, Matt Farrell (Justin Long), gun-toting rebel McClane gets to him before the bad guys, and the pair team up on an against-all-odds crusade to rescue not only the country’s infrastructure, but McClane’s rebel daughter too.
Bruising fights are balanced well with gentle humour, and the pace never lets up on a 130-minute rollercoaster which is ludicrously enjoyable. You’ll lose count of the times the blood-spattered detective snatches victory from the slavering jaws of defeat.
Long is an excellent comic foil, Olyphant resists the temptation to overplay his snarling villain, and martial arts expert Maggie Q kicks and punches like a demon in her big fight scenes, including a superbly choreographed dust-up in a lift-shaft.
The set pieces are innovative and entertaining throughout - McClane’s thrill ride sees him take out a helicopter full of baddies by catapulting a police car into mid-air, drive another vehicle down an elevator shaft, and guide an armoured 18-wheel truck along a collapsing motorway. And there’s always a hint of humour or dry one-liner just around the corner.
Only during the climactic, effects-laden battle with a rocket-laden fighter plane does the film ask us to stretch our imaginations just a little too far.
But this (along with a couple of continuity glitches) is happily forgiven in a no-holds-barred movie which is unquestionably the daddy of this year’s big-budget blockbusters so far.

If Sylvester Stallone can shake off his Rocky Balboa ring-rust at 60, there’s plenty more in McClane’s tank for Die Hard round five. Bring it on . . .