I have to admit, I thought this movie would suck. The trailers pretty much announced pure suckiness and I wasn't really a fan of the first three. The first Die Hard film was okay for an 80's action movie, but it was too self-aware, somewhat silly and lacked the dull-witted comedy of a Schwarzenegger or Stallone movie. The second Die Hard was nearly a parody of the first which I had no interest in and the third was pretty obvious in how it had been retrofitted to be a Die Hard script, doing a decent job of entertaining but not being exceptionally impressive in its dragged-out action one-uppery. This movie is a continuation of the trend, somewhat revitalized by a long hibernation, but mainly the same old thing.
The trailer does its damnedest to make the movie look annoying and overdriven, but the worst parts of the movie really are in the trailer. Justin Long manages to be fairly un-irritating throughout the movie and I didn't even want to stab him in the face with an iMac. Bruce Willis looked and acted, of course, like a grizzled dried pig's ear chew toy for a dog, providing an endless stream of bitter and old stares and sneers as he bloodlessly dispatched endless goons.
The movie itself had a somewhat interesting though grossly unrealistic and cartoonish plot, revolving around computer hacking and domestic cyber-terrorism, one of the more elaborately unrealistic scenarios played out since Hackers. On top of that, the PG-13 rating gave the movie a strange and slapdash feel, every death feeling like a crash test dummy being tossed aside and the language being trimmed down to one line overlapping another to avoid obsceneties, pretty much going against everything the series was established for.
The once violent, vulgar, and comedic Willis is reined in and kept on the tight leash of a teen film, playing the overprotective father, quietly staring, shooting, or bleeding. It all feels rather rote and the action is the only thing that breaks the monotony of the character setup, doing fairly well but building to the point that I just wanted the movie to be over.
The amount of action material and stunts in the film is definitely a bargain, but it's a bit far over the top and it eventually gets to the point that you really grow numb to the ever-more-improbable explosions and escapes.
Timothy Olyphant makes a decent villain, fuming away in the background, but he's a bit wasted on this movie.
The entertainment may be in here, but it's far from an enjoyable ride.
