Am I Missing Something?

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

This movie went to the future and back too. The action is bad a$$. The computer stuff made it up to date. Him wanting to save his bad a$$ daughter was great. Everything was great, but one thing. The bad guy. He's not really a bad guy like in the other Die Hards. Still I liked it better than 2 and 3.

This movie was awesome the cast the acting the story i was at the edge of my seat thru the whole movie .. probably one of my favorite among all the die hards

It's Independence Day weekend. Flags are waving, National Anthems are being sung. It's a country-wide holiday. And ex-Department of Defense programmer Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) plans on cutting the celebration short by cutting off America, electronically. Hackers nationwide are being taken in by the FBI to find connections to this breakdown. One hacker in particular, Matthew Ferrell (Justin Long) gets a knock on his door, and it's none other than New York police detective John McClane (Bruce Willis). Ferrell tries to lead McClane astray from his apartment, when suddenly, hit men strike, and McClane is forced to kick some ass yet again. McClane and Ferrell eventually escape, and begin a national journey to find Thomas Gabriel, take him down, and end his hacker regime.Live Free Or Die Hard has taken the series to the largest scale than ever before. The first took place in a singular building, the second an airport, the third a city, and the fourth, an entire nation. At this point, I don't know if Die Hard could dial back the scale again without it seeming weaker in its spectacle, though the original movie did have the smallest scale. I appreciate the scale, though it makes it seem unlike a Die Hard movie, as the others have taken place over the course of a single day. However, I won't say I don't appreciate the scale it brings to Die Hard. It's fresh, and finally decides to take Die Hard in another direction.The villain is certainly a good threat, but I don't think he's as memorable as, say Hans Gruber from the first film or Simon Gruber from the third film. He is a passable villain. In terms of the concept, I really like it. John McClane, unfortunately, would be useless now due to his lack of knowledge for computers or technology in general. This film proposes that if tech did fail, modern cowboy McClane would be the only one to save the day. The plot is certainly not the most intelligent, and has many lapses in logic, but I forgive it because of it's popcorn movie feel, which was not (At least I would argue) as potent in Die Hard With A Vengeance, save for a few select scenes. I appreciate the third installment trying to be fresh and new, but I don't think entertainment in an action movie franchise such as Die Hard should be sacrificed for a hard-hitting plot. I could even argue that the plot of the first film isn't the greatest an action movie can do. This movie knows it's not very witty or smart, so it makes up for it in being a fun popcorn movie. The messages in this movie are important, but not in the context of the film. In fact, the movie is based on an article, which, unless you use Die Hard for your daily source of social commentary, you should read, because it explains it better than this movie. It's ultimately a dumb action movie, so sub textual stuff like that doesn't land.John McClane is great in this movie. He feels fresh off where the series left off, even within a twelve year difference, ready to quip, kick ass, and save the day. And he delivers the lines and action with conviction, which most older action stars fail to do. I feel the character of Matthew Ferrell is bashed too much. He's a nice, fun, modern character who actually brings something to the duo dynamic with John McClane, unlike Zeus from With A Vengeance, who was just another tough dude. The interplay between McClane and Ferrell is fun, and I enjoy Long in the role. The side characters are pretty forgettable, save for the ninja girl or Kevin Smith. The acting is good, passable for an action movie.The movie is quickly paced, and doesn't stay in one place for long, which keeps the movie within the Die Hard pace. Though it takes place over more than one day, the pacing is quick so it almost feels like a day. It's a quick, fun watch.Addressing its PG-13 rating, it is a shame for a Die Hard movie to stoop low enough to give itself a PG-13 just for the market. I think people would've seen it if it was R anyway. This sequel had a long time coming, and Die Hard is pretty much a big franchise in Hollywood. I don't like the fact that they cut off the latter part of the infamous "Yippie - Ki - Ya" line. I feel like Fox should've given some leeway, because that line is almost a centerpiece of the movies, something you wait for. But, the action feels R-rated, and I don't dislike the movie because of its softening.Live Free Or Die Hard, whether bashed for its unfaithfulness or differences from the rest of the movies, I don't feel can be denied as a good Die Hard movie, or a good movie in general. Lest we forget that the first 30 minutes of With A Vengeance wasn't even a Die Hard movie. It was ripped from a script called Simon Says, and those first 30 minutes of the movie are better than the rest. Live Free Or Die Hard is a fun return to form for the franchise, and the best sequel.

It seems as if the movies are starting to get further and further apart, but then again even though number three basically started off really good and progressively went downhill after that first explosion, this latest installment, 12 years after the previous one, doesn't even seem to get off the ground. In a sense it seems as if a producer was reading a script for a completely unrelated film and realised that they hadn't done a Die Hard for a while, and gave Bruce Willis a call. Discovering that Bruce was more than happy to bring McLane back onto the big screen, completely rewrote the characters to centre the film around the hero of Nakatomi plaza.Mind you, a lot has changed since we last met with John McLane – everything has gone digital, and everything is connected by computers. Also, this is post September 11, so suddenly terrorists are more on our mind. Anyway, we have this young computer hotshot (and the fact that he seemed so young really annoyed me in a way) who had worked for the US Government. However when we pointed out all of the security flaws and how vulnerable they were to a cyberattack, they took it on advisement. So, he decided to go public, but the government wasn't all that impressed and basically made sure that he had a really bad rest of his life. Well, being somewhat upset at being dumped like that, he somehow got together heaps of money, and a team of crack soldiers, and then pretty much took down the system.The way I see it, Die Hard one has terrorists taking a building hostage, number two an airport, number three a city, and number four the United States of America. Mind you, as well as getting progressively lame, they also become progressively unrealistic. For instance I am always astounded at the resources that these criminals have at their disposal, though we must accept that at least in number two we were dealing with a South American Drug-lord (and number one and three did suggest that the thieves were actually pretty well resourced). However, come number four, I am still scratching my head and wondering where on Earth this computer geek managed to get his hands on enough money to pull this off, and also make the connections that he did (as well as acquiring FBI uniforms and a helicopter).The film begins with a group of computer hackers progressively being assassinated, and in a way this sort of suggests that maybe, just maybe, including it into the Die Hard franchise is not really a good idea. However, it could just have been the case that they felt that if it was a stand alone movie then maybe it wouldn't have worked as well as it did. However, adding it to the Die Hard franchise really doesn't do all that much as well. Okay, while the film does address issues with how interconnected our society has become, and how reliant we are now on computers, in the end I sort of look at it and think, well, The Net dealt with this issue so much better, and while I didn't think all that much of that film, it was certainly superior to this one.