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Dom Robinson reviews

Die Hard 4.0: Ultimate Action Edition (2-disc)

Distributed by
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Cover DVD:
2-disc DVD:
Blu-ray:


picture After 3 films in seven years, it seemed that was it for John McClane.

But then 12 years later came the fourth installment, again with Bruce Willis in the lead role, by now a cop who should be taking it easy but who finds himself drawn into another rollercoaster ride of nonsense against a bad guy who thinks he'll be the one who can finally deal with the unbeatable cop.

As the film begins, we see that Lucy McClane (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is now all grown up, which shows how long this film has been in development as the original came out in 1988 with this entry being released in 2007... which makes her about 24 at least. McClane clearly has as much of a problem talking to his daughter now as he did to his wife in the original film when they argued in her executive bathroom before the terrorists took control of the Nakatomi building.

McClane is teamed up with Matt Farrell (Justin Long) when there had been talk some time ago that Lucy would partner him in this film and would be played by Britney Spears. Good job they didn't hire her in 2007 for this as that's when she went completely mental and shaved her hair. Farrell is clearly not the kind of person the FBI would hire for an important job because he's a computer hacker which our hero has been tasked with picking up in the middle of the night since a situation has just occured during the opening credits which looked like it would benefit a substantial number of them, if only the majority of them hadn't all died in questionable explosions, of which only one is shown onscreen, and at the same time the FBI believe their systems have been hacked.

What isn't explained is how the victims' PCs are infected with a virus which cause a yellow light to emit inside their PCs which then causes an explosion when 'delete' is pressed. Total madness!

Since McClane and Farrell managed to escape from being dead, they set off in the detective's car but as daylight comes so does the hacking of the traffic network and all the lights are turned green, causing havoc on the streets and traffic comes to a standstill, so it's off on foot they go... Hmm.. is this turning into 16 Blocks? It seemed so at first, but no, it's just the beginning of another bad day for Bruce as the bad guys trigger alarms at various FBI buildings and send the stock market into meltdown with fake reports on it crashing.

From there on, it's pretty much action all the way. Farrell is a smart-talker but in a way that's amusing rather than annoying, which could be very easy for a sidekick to fall into; there's a Special Agent Johnson, like in the first film, but he's not in it long enough to establish any particular connection to the original; and there's a cameo from Kevin Smith as The Warlock, one of Farrell's online buddies who appears in the second half and may be the only man who can help them, even if McClane wants to take the piss out of his humble abode.


picture The baddies are led by Timothy Olyphant as Thomas Gabriel, who has particular reasons for taking control of everything in what Farrell refers to as a 'fire sale', where all the utilities, generally controlled by computers, are taken over to the point where chaos ensues and the only available option is to sell everything off because it's neither use nor ornament to anyone. He makes for a good enemy but is no Alan Rickman. Most of the rest of his underlings are little more than geeks or hired grunts, but there's feistyness in his better half, Mai (Maggie Q), who tries to high-kick McClane into next week, but overall it doesn't take a genius to work out who's going to win there.

Most of the cops we see are plastic plods, particularly the lead of Cliff Curtis as FBI Deputy Director Bowman.

I also spotted one continuity mishap, 55 mins in, as McClane breaks a car window in order to steal it, yet when it cuts to him then opening the door... the glass is intact!

This film certainly delivers on the action front, hence why it got a high score of 8/10, but like the third film it fails to deliver anything approaching believeability and as a result it doesn't quite hit the heights of the first two films. Still, it's well worth seeing.

Presentation-wise, this version is the 2-disc "Ultimate Action Edition" which, oddly enough, is the only version which actually lets you hear the full, usual catchphrase from John McClane, no doubt along with all the other fruity language which is totally natural for our main lead, and which you can tell exactly what was excised from the theatrical version because off the toned-down subtitles. This begs the question - why release this version, and presumably the same goes for the extras, on DVD only and not Blu-ray?

Oh, and one last thing - the title. Given the computer-related storyline, Die Hard 4.0 seemed like a decent one to go for whereas the alternate title, in the US and other countries, Live Free or Die Hard was the crappest I've ever heard, and would also through it out of the alphabet with the others in the series since they all begin with "D"(!)


picture The film is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and both picture and sound are without fault. The image is sharp and colourful, bringing across all the explosions you'd expect as well as the tightly-framed shots as required. My viewing experience was helped by watching itupscaled to a 37" Panasonic plasma screen via a Samsung BD-P1500 BluRay Player. The sound comes in Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1, so I went for the latter, and to say you might need ear-defenders is an understandment. This one is a fantastic demo disc which really delivers the goods.

The extras are as follows, with the first 4 coming on disc 1 and the rest on disc 2:

The main menu is a fairly dull affair - static and with some of the not-very-emphatic theme music. There are subtitles in English and a decent number of chapters with 36 across the two hours.


FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS



OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2009.

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