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Rating:
Shamelessly exaggerated, the "Die Hard" series—I love it: it embodies the stereotype of the American hero... The one who, in a tank top and without warning, kicks the bad guys in the ass from start to finish. The one who never gives up, who has a total patriotic and duty-bound spirit (it's hard to find a more Republican film than this one), who creates an escape route when there isn't one, who has time for a one-liner before taking down the unfortunate victim, who gulps down aspirin like candy, and has a messy life because he's a hero only to save his NY and America, but suffocates in the banality of everyday life. In short, the legendary agent John McClane: kick asses!!! If you go to a cinema to see "Die Hard - Live Free or Die Hard" and don't enter into this critical perspective, you're a masochist and have just thrown 7.50 euros and two hours of your life down the toilet.
I headed to the cinema hoping that this saga wouldn't be ruined with the fourth installment. I came out with a big smile, satisfied. In this new chapter, our John deals with hackers whose intent is to throw the entire USA into chaos (by undermining the banking and services system) to steal billions of dollars. This time McClane teams up with a young, inexperienced, and brainy hacker with whom he will manage to set everything right, as usual.
2 hours of show without a single moment of pause. The dead moments are zero, the adrenaline is scant like the whole series because the fortune of "Die Hard" lies in mixing pure action (in the sense of entertainment for spectacular scenes) with the humor of deliberately exaggerated and brash dialogues to the core. The special effects dominate many scenes, truly absurd, leaving you breathless. They try in every way to kill him, but when John defiantly yells at a military jet "is that all you can do?" the villain of the moment starts trembling too. SUVs end up in elevator shafts, cars shot into the air like bullets bring down helicopters, torrents of magazines, and bumper cars in tunnels. No way... he’s too tough. In this fourth chapter, he may have lost his hair, and even gets kicked (a little, obviously) by a woman, but in the end, the philosophy is always the same: always get back up, never surrender.
Coincidentally, "Die Hard," unlike all today's action movies, is a winning saga because it lacks sentimental moping, character identity crises, and psychological introspection that break the rhythm (a deathly flaw for an action film in my opinion). Here, the pace is turbulent, without dips, and the whole film flows following the clichés of the typical American action movie, trimming away all that isn't spectacular or entertaining in the dialogues. The supporting actors are good backups, but all the attention is on Willis, who promised never to don the "Die Hard" role again. Luckily, he reconsidered. Exaggerated, absurd, ironic, and pompous "Die Hard - Live Free or Die Hard" offered me exactly what I wanted: 2 hours of fun after a week of work. The scene editing was really excellent.
Negative notes: the absence of the tank top and aspirin, and the presence of the brawny yet useless Edoardo Costa (that soap opera guy) in a male "Bellucci Matrix II" version.
3 and a half stars
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