Ian Morris

Thursday 25 September 2008, 4:37pm

A Mac ruined Die Hard 4.0 for me

No one can argue that the original Die Hard is the best. The reason it's so good is that Bruce Willis plays a kick-arse cop who doesn't need help from anyone to get his junk sorted.

Sadly, the most recent outing for the franchise, which I saw on DVD recently, features an ageing Willis once again attempting to save the world. But this time Brucie can't do it on his own -- instead he enlists the help of an upstart young hacker. Now, if you're anything like me, as soon as you hear the word 'hacker' appear in anything made in Hollywood, your blood pressure will increase substantially.

The movie could have been passable if they had picked someone who looked the part, and maybe if they used some language that wasn't straight out of The Big Book of Computing Clichés. They did neither of those things, however. The script was laced with ludicrous nonsense, and they cast Justin Long.

Long is the smug, wide-mouthed buffoon who plays the unbearably self-satisfied and sickeningly trendy 'Mac' in Apple's US TV adverts. This meant that every time he was on screen I felt a burning desire to yell at the screen, "I'M A MAC, I'M A MAC AND I'M BETTER THAN YOU!" Obviously I didn't, because my new neighbours would have complained, but my enjoyment of the movie was quashed anyway.

If there's ever a Die Hard 5, I hope the producers will take it back to the old school, where Bruce sorts out the problem on his own without some self-satisfied moron in his orbit for 90 minutes. Seriously, it's like asking Chuck Norris if he needs help opening a beer.

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