Die Hard 4.0
| State of Body | Certainly not stale, but as this corpse was always going to be a success it could have taken a few more risks. |
|---|---|
| Detail of Inspection | Inspected once. |
| Forensic Investigator | winstoninabox |
| Comments | Fun, but can’t make it to the next level. What more could one expect with “4″ in the title? That’s what the writers, producers and director hoped you’d be thinking. |
Twenty years after Die Hard the fourth installment of the franchise Die Hard 4.0 ( Live Free or Die Hard within the US of A) has arrived. It’s a real popcorn over-the-top action movie, but while it’s great entertainment it’s never going to challenge Die Hard’s place as first among action movies. This is because it takes more than action to make an action movie that can stand the test of time.
Action heroes need a nemesis, and Die Hard 4.0 sets up Thomas Gabriel with an original motivation, only to throw his characterization away. Gabriel is first characterized as an United States patriot concerned about his country’s vulnerability to attack via the Internet. He is bitter that his warnings went unheeded, and that he was fired and disgraced when he demonstrated this to his superiors. With America currently engaged in its own war on terrorism, having a domestic terrorist who is also a patriot is fertile characterization. To turn him into yet another exceptional thief instead of exploring these motivations was a major disappointment. Come on writers, even the movie’s title of Live Free or Die Hard is screaming out about patriotism in the United States at war. Why didn’t you go there?
Four movies and three times an immediate family member of John McClane has been endangered by the villain’s plans. Time to give it a rest. In Die Hard: With a Vengeance the McClane family, like many families, had disintegrated. That often underrated film really benefited from the bleaker characterization of McClane, with his alcoholism and hangover giving it a more mature tone than the comic book Die Hard 2. When thrust into life and death situations a hero McClane may be, but he’s unsuccessful in the mundane life of a family man. Die Hard 4.0’s inclusion of Lucy as a significant supporting character is a retrograde step to Die Hard: With a Vengeance’s progression of the John McClane story. The series should have moved on from making a McClane the go to hostage of the film. In the climax Farrell can instead fill that role.
And Lucy McClane’s involvement undercuts the stated motivations of why McClane does what he does. The exchange between McClane and Farrell about being a hero really intrigued me. McClane said that he did what he did because there’s no one else to do it. Great Everyman sentiments. But once Lucy is kidnapped these sentiments are no longer applicable, for then McClane’s motivation is to save his family. McClane should have remained the reluctant hero. And Lucy’s presence dilutes Farrell’s transition from armchair anarchist to someone who makes a stand for what’s right because finally she is the one who encourages him to toughen up, rather that it coming solely from McClane’s Everyman sentiments.
The movie was being billed as the battle between the analogue McClane versus the digital Gabriel. Great idea. This shirts versus skins subtext is a core of the films. McClane must be out-manned, out-gunned, under-informed - basically he’s supposed to, well, die hard to succeed. This time there’s too much reliance on techie characters in the non-action sequences. Certainly techie Matt is required as a talking head to explain the bad guy’s plan. And he has a certain usefulness for techie problems, like shutting down the gas works or opening the electronic security door, problems that require specific skills or knowledge rather than brawn. McClane’s forte is improvisation and so it should be him who solves most of the problems by thinking fast and low tech. The biggest mistake is the inclusion of the Warlock character, for he simultaneously neuters Matt’s burgeoning role as techie problem solver and leaves McClane standing around while Matt and Warlock talk tech. And like his namesake he magically provides the players, sorry protagonists, with the info needed to progress to the next encounter. Sorry scene.
In these big budget productions product placement ensures that only current models of any product will be shown. And so when McClane commandeers a car we’re looking at a model that the consumer can go out and buy! buy!! buy!!! now (no need for waiting). But McClane utilizing current products is the antithesis to the high tech/low tech battle central to Die Hard 4.0. McClane has already established he’s in a 70’s time warp by subjecting Matt to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” (yet more overtones of patriotism). So when they steal a car it shouldn’t be some shiny new Euro-trash product placement, but good ol’ American grunt. You know he’s gotta be tearing cross country in a 70’s circa Charger, Challenger, Trans Am or Corvette. You just know it.
The idea that the nation’s financial data is downloaded to a secure site in the event of an Internet-based attack makes no sense. Techno-neophyte that I am I’m sure that that data is already backed up every day to many diversified locations. Spreading the data out over many locations is much more secure than holding it in one place. Gabriel needs another final plan, one that involves data theft yet keeps his patriotism central to it.
So onto the FF.
After getting the code breaking program from Matt Farrell, the evil genius Thomas Gabriel begins his Internet attack on the USA by hacking into the FBI command center’s computers. FBI Deputy Director Bowman wants all the known hackers rounded up for questioning. One of these is hackers is Farrell.
John McClane is sitting in his unmarked car in a car park of Rutgers University. He seems distracted and watching a particular window of the campus when he receives a call. It’s from his boss who tells him that although he shouldn’t be there again using police time and resources for his personal business he can at least make himself useful by picking up Farrell and taking him to D.C for questioning by the Feds. McClane drives off without explanation.
Gabriel’s men begin to kill the hackers they’ve used, but not by blowing them up. That would draw unwanted attention to themselves and wouldn’t give any real confirmation that the target was indeed dead. The killers just walk up and shoot the hackers in their own homes with silenced pistols. Shortly after McClane arrives at Farrell’s apartment he and Farrell are attacked by one such team, but they escape.
Gabriel is in real time connection to terrorists unfriendly to the USA. Gabriel is having a fire sale of the utilities and services of the nations capitol. Each utility or service has a reserve price. When that price has been met by any or all terrorists depositing money into the nominated account, then the utility or service will be shutdown. To show he can do it Gabriel says he’ll perform the demonstration he promised them. Gabriel empties the public servants from all the buildings in Washington using a biological weapons scare. Bowman is also forced to clear the FBI command center and set up a makeshift command center in the car park. After this the deposits to disable the first service - the traffic system - begin.
The money is quickly acrued and the the mayhem begins. Making their way to Washington McClane and Farrell are caught in the huge traffic jam instigated by Gabriel. They’re forced to abandon their vehicle and walk the remainder of the distance. Getting to the FBI command center they find pandemonium. Bowman has lost interest in questioning Farrell, but Farrell seems to have an inkling about what is going on and is also rather spooked by the photos of the dead hackers. For Farrell’s interrogation Bowman sends them to another office. The action set pieces progress the same. However there are some variations to plot details along the way…
- In the conversation between McClane and Gabriel when Gabriel shows that he can access any information he likes about McClane, Gabriel mentions McClane is divorced and living separate from his family, and that McClane has a daughter at Rutger’s University. Gabriel threatens McClane that although he’s on a tight schedule now, should McClane intervene in his schemes, at some point in the future McClane’s family will suffer.
- After reading McClane’s police record Gabriel makes mention of the Gruber brothers. Gabriel expresses it must be kismet that McClane is involved, and adds that the Gruber’s have been of some small inspiration to him. McClane remarks that Gabriel must be just another criminal masquerading as a terrorist. Gabriel smiles and says, “Not quite. Just another patriot masquerading as a terrorist.” McClane replies that with criminals its always about the money. Gabriel disagrees by insisting that what he’s doing, he’s doing for the country.
- Gabriel talks about some American systems requiring a cleansing and reforging to make them stronger than before. Although there will be some pain now, everything he attacks will in the future become stronger for it. McClane politely points out that he thinks that’s a bunch of BS.
- After the footage of the Congress building exploding is aired Farrell cries out, “They blew up Congress!” To which McClane replies, “Don’t be a moron whine-stein, we’d have heard it from here.”
- Farrell’s laughingly bad impersonation of a desperate child is unsuccessful in convincing the OneStar operator to release the BMW. McClane, looking up the street spies a parked muscle car and tells Farrell not to worry about his failure. Hot-wiring the muscle car McClane quips that this is what he should have done in the first place.
- The car is equiped with a CB radio (maybe it really ought to be a black Trans Am? a bright orange Dodge would be just a little too silly, wouldn’t it?) When the phone network goes down (after the OneStar incident and not before) McClane uses the CB to get in contact with Bowman.
- A few hours pass before McClane is able to contact Bowman. Bowman says that he eventually took seriously Farrell’s predictions that this was a fire sale, and has already dispatched a chopper to the gas works. Little does Bowman know that Gabriel had hoped for this, and Mai Lihn and her thugs have already killed the chopper’s crew and are impersonating them to gain easy entry to the gas works. I just have to make Bowman more effective professionally because I hate seeing incompetent professionals in action movies. Gabriel’s successes should come because he is smarter than the rest, not because his opposition is dumber than most.
- Rather than Gabriel being in charge of the project to download the financial data in case of Internet attack, Bowman finds out from the 2 Homeland Security agents that after Gabriel’s removal from the FBI he was recruited by Homeland to develop a theoretical wargame for an attack on the US via the Internet and its utilities. After funding was approved but before the wargame could be fully implemented the project was shutdown. Gabriel fought bitterly to have it restarted, but to no avail. After that Gabriel, the funding and all the intelligence disappeared. It appears that the government has inadvertently funded this attack on itself.
- The building that Gabriel’s men have infiltrated is the secret location for the servers for the Federal Reserve Bank system. Gabriel’s plan is to download the Federal Reserve banks electronic records and auction them to the highest bidder. Maybe.
- To cut out the Warlock character Farrell is somehow able to track Gabriel’s location when Gabriel talks to them at the gas works. After McClane and Farrell arrive, and the nature of the facility is discovered, McClane thinks that Gabriel intends to electronicaly rob the entire Federal Reserve bank. Farrell is less convinced. McClane contends that, “It’s always about the money.”
- As the bad guys drive from the secret complex Gabriel shoots up the car McClane and Farrel drove there in.
Let’s continue to after the wackiness of jet versus big rig has settled down. McClane comes into the warehouse to find that there is some kind of Internet auction happening. The terrorists are bidding on the stolen Federal Reserve records. It all still ends the same with McClane’s abbreviated “Yippee-ki-yay, mother-”. But in the denouement Farrell inspects Gabriel’s laptop and finds that Gabriel had made fake data of the stolen Federal Reserve bank data, and this was what he intended to hand over to the terrorists. Furthermore there are records of every contact Gabriel had had with the terrorists - names, dates, locations, computer addresses, etc. - and also that he’d kept diagnostics for analysis of all the mischief he’d caused. It appeared that after disappearing he had truly intended to hand this all over to the FBI.