Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard (Blu-ray Disc, 2009)

Matt Farrell: “Do you have a plan?”

John McClane: “I'm gonna kill all these guys and rescue Lucy.”



Die Hard 4.0 (Live Free or Die Hard)

Computers and cyber-terrorism.

Minority Report type of screens.

And a 50 year-old Detective John McClane.

Certainly a recipe for disaster.

Set twelve years after Die Hard: With a Vengeance, the fourth film in the Die Hard franchise brings the anti-hero John McClane (Bruce Willis) back to Washington, D.C. (Dulles Airport (serving Washington D.C.) was the site of Die Hard 2) after stops in Los Angeles (The Nakatomi Plaza in Die Hard) and New York (Die Hard: With a Vengeance).

Strangely enough, I was not planning on watching the current Die Hard installment until the scene where Matt Farrell’s (Justin Long) apartment is obliterated following a failed assassination attempt.

Farrell (Long) had a ton of expensive collectibles that were incinerated when the decapitated head of a large Terminator Endoskeleton fell from an overhead shelf onto the delete key of Farrell’s keyboard (which was connected to several explosives). (IMDB.com reports that this is a “nod to executive producer William Wisher Jr. and composer Marco Beltrami. Wisher co-wrote and appeared in The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and Beltrami composed the score for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003).”)

That got me going. I was rooted to my seat till the final credits rolled.

The film revisited and featured a number of Die Hard series trademarks: John McClane getting injured or thrown around like a rag doll, the element of broken glass and the use of a facilities “air-ducts, elevator shafts, and maintenance areas,” McClane’s catchphrase, “Yippie Ki Yay Mother……” and that the movie’s plot “usually unfolds” after a period of 24 hours. Die Hard 4.0 also brought back other trademarks, specifically that of McClane having a personal stake in the situation (McClane had to rescue his ex-wife in Die Hard and Die Hard 2, while his daughter was the damsel in distress in Die Hard 4.0)—which was noticeably absent during Die Hard: With a Vengeance.

In a related tidbit, Die Hard: With a Vengeance screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh mentions in the fim’s DVD commentary that he and “the production were questioned by the FBI due to the accuracy of the robbery details found in the Die Hard: With a Vengence script. Since the production had used actual blue prints in formulating the robbery to ensure its accuracy, apparently it was too accurate as such a plan could actually work.”

Cyber-Terrorism at work

I believe that the Die Hard 4.0. storyline may have come up with a similar, plausible scenario wherein the concept of a post 9-11 Woodlawn facility could actually exist. The idea of saving financial, government, and general information seems like the most logical recourse to take in the event of a terrorist attack—but as portrayed in the movie, it is also a move that is not devoid of vulnerability.

Wikipedia.org defined what cyber-terrorism—specifically Farrell’s (Long) “fire sale” as:

“The term “fire sale” is used in the 2007 movie Live Free or Die Hard (Die Hard 4.0 in EU) to describe a hypothetical attack by computer hackers on vital networks of the United States government, infrastructure, and economy. Use of the term is explained with a reference to a typical fire sale: “everything must go.” Any computer-operated system will be a target for such an attack, although the movie focused on four primary objectives: disrupt