Bruce Willis returns for the fourth installment of the Die Hard series! Rock!

Or Not.

Man what a let down.  Sure there's lots of hokey gunplay and explosion and dodging flying cars and completely outrageous situations... but its DIE HARD! The franchise invented this sort of film, and for that you have to give them a wide berth to continue this sort of thing...

...but at least act like it matters!  This movie is just, well, uninteresting on so many planes it isn't funny.  And that's the other knife to the gut for this film.  Unlike its predecessors, it just isn't funny.  The humor that is there is just lame and contrived.

The plot can be summarized like this:  A group of cyber terrorists led by a disgruntled ex-government agent cripples the network infrastructure of the US, and thereby cripples most of the country in an attempt to steal billions in electronic assets from the Treasury department.  Our hero, John McClane goes to arrest one of the unknowing accomplices in this global hack, and gets caught up in it all, eventually having to save his daughter from the terrorist leader.

And that's the real problem here.  The plot of the film has little if any personal connection to McClane.  In each of the previous three Die Hards there was an urgent and immediate personal threat to McClane or his family.  Yeah sure eventually his daughter is kidnapped and he has to rescue her, but you spend most of the film wondering WTF any of this has to do with him!!  Until finally she re-appears near the end.

Back to the humor.  Part of the charm of the Die Hard franchise is the wit and humor, most notably in parts one and three, which is sorely lacking here.  Not until near the end does it start to get remotely funny, but by that time you're just tired of watching.

And as for Willis, dude, could you at least pretend to be interested in this role?  I got the feeling he was just there to pay the rent on this one.  A flat performance would be an understatement.  And as for the wayward hacker Matt Farrell (Justin "I'm a Mac" Long) his shtick gets tired equally fast.

And as for the action that made Die Hard famous? Yeah its there, in droves.  Lots of gunplay and bullet-dodging, high-speed car vs. semi vs. delivery truck chases, a bit of helicopter crashing action.  But the death knell for the film comes as McClane jumps on the back of an impossibly maneuverable F-22, and jumps off just before it crashes.  That entire sequence was entirely over the top, even for Die Hard.

I wouldn't recommend dropping the coin to visit a theater for this one.  Save your pennies and go see Transformers or Harry Potter instead.  I was sorely disappointed, and hopefully they either retire the franchise after this or are able to resurrect its former glory!

Links: Live Free or Die Hard at IMDB.  Live Free or Die Hard at Amazon.com

Technorati Tags: live free or die hard, 2007, bruce willis, john mcclane, matt farrell, justin long, movie review