Live Free or Die Hard synopsis

Synopsis

The old school cop is back!

John McClane is back and badder than ever, and this time he's working for Homeland Security. He calls on the services of a young hacker in his bid to stop a ring of Internet terrorists intent on taking control of America's computer infrastructure.

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Alternative Titles

Die Hard 4: Die Hardest, Die Hard: Tears of the Sun, Die Hard: Reset, Die Hard 4, Die Hard 4.0, Duro de matar 4, Duro de Matar 4, Die Hard 4.0: Live Free or Die Hard, Die Hard 4 - Live Free or Die Hard, Stirb Langsam 4.0 - Live Free or Die Hard, Die Hard 4 - Retour en enfer, Stirb Langsam 4

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High speed and special ops Epic heroes action, explosives, exciting, action-packed or villain car, action, cars, adrenaline or speed martial arts, kung fu, choreography, cool or action-packed action, villain, funny, humor or silly action, villain, superhero, hero or action-packed Show All…

Popular reviews

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  This film is to the Die Hard franchise what Light beer is to Beer.

  You shouldn't have it, but you'll do it anyway because, hey, it's beer!

  And then the aftertaste reminds you that it wasn't the real deal.

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  This one hasn’t aged very well in the last 13 years, especially if you watch it in context with any of the earlier films, which are all far superior. Luddite McClane against a bunch of cyber-terrorists works as a central dynamic, but the action sequences start big and keep getting bigger, until McClane’s taking down fighter jets with big rigs on collapsing highway overpasses. (That happens after McClane kills a helicopter with a car, by the way.)

  I keep calling him McClane, but there’s very little of the character from the earlier movies in this one. Even in Die Hard 2, McClane is still a smart, smart-mouthed cop with a total disrespect for authority and a wicked sense of humor.…

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  While the first film in the franchise I watched was the original, over a decade earlier my mother went to see this by herself in the theatres while I went to see another film (I think I was too young to see it back then), and I still remember how thrilled my mother and everyone else who came out of the movie were. And now that I've seen it, I understand why.

  Len Wiseman draws inspiration from Michael Bay's book to bring us a modern, and likely more explosive, installment of Die Hard, in which, after three films, McClane must confront his biggest threat: technology. The high-octane explosions and action sequences are spectacular. The one-liners are equally as amusing as…

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  *aggressively assaults keyboard* I'M IN

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  (2020 Summer Blockbuster Series)

  Die Hard gets hacked ... as Detective John McClane finds himself in the middle of a cyber-terrorist plot to take control of the United States' infrastructure.

  "Then why are you doing this? ... Because there's nobody else to do it right now, that's why. Believe me, if there were somebody else to do it, I'd let them do it, but there's not. So we're doing it ... Ah. That's what makes you that guy."

  As a huge fan of the Die Hard franchise, I had a blast getting to see Live Free or Die Hard in the theater. Rewatching it now after having seen the miserable disappointment that was Die Hard 5, you can see how…

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  100-word review: I sympathise with Matthew's "just because it's old rock, doesn't make it classic rock" sentiment, but damn man that's Creedence — what ya bitchin' about? If you thought I was weird for thinking the second Die Hard is almost equally as good as the first, wait 'till you hear this. Even though the hacker scenes are dumb as hell, the consequential fallout and societal collapse is riveting, and so are the action sequences in this fourth instalment; the tunnel and F-35B scenes in particular are F&F-level over-the-top antics that I love for their memorability. Surprisingly awesome.

  Part of my August 2022 80s & 90s Cop Franchises challenge; 11th out of 18 films.

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  Wiseman's less a hack than he is a pretty good visual mimic with shitty taste in material. He pulls a lot of DIE HARD's lateral moves along axis and his action compositions tend to have a lot of depth; the tunnel sequence particularly is about as cleanly edited and spatially coherent as you're likely to get these days, not to mention largely practical (F35B Lightning fighter jet sequence excepted - still a nice shot at a TRUE LIES knockoff). Long story short: being a bad DIE HARD movie doesn't keep this from being a decent action movie.

  Super bonus points* for the sneaky/funny/smart scene in which the bad guys broadcast a shot of the U.S. Capitol exploding and everyone rushes outside to see if it's real.

  *said points deducted for stalling for nearly 10 minutes while we get to hang out with Kevin Smith.

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  I know my take of this will be quite a hot one, but I've always dug this divisive fourth installment of the Die Hard franchise, which came over a full decade after With a Vengeance. Bringing the old-school John McClane into the computer age could have been a complete disaster, but I'd say Die Hard 4.0 (which is a far better title than Live Free or Die Hard) does a better job of it than would have been expected.

  This time, Detective John McClane hasn't exactly reached a new high since the events of the last film. He's become completely divorced from Holly, and has a rocky relationship with his daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). As if things couldn't look…

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  Sequels to classics are always going to have a difficult time from both critics and fans alike. Die Hard is revered by action film fans and movie lovers in general as the quintessential high-water mark for the genre. McTiernan was a great director, and he may have lost his way in recent years, but he left some act for others to attempt to follow. Follow they have, with mixed results. Len Wiseman delivered the fourth installment of the trials of John McClane. Wrong place, wrong time, again.
  With recent events of Cyber-terrorism, (on a slightly smaller scale involving Sony) this "Fire-sale" was something new for the franchise. Die Hard With A Vengeance was a significant step up from Renny Harlin's…

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  Michael Scott (The Office s4): "Okay, here's the thing about Die Hard 4. Die Hard 1, the original, John McClain is just this normal guy, you know? He's just a normal New York city cop who gets his feet cut, he gets beat up. But he's an everyday guy. In Die Hard 4, he is jumping a motorcycle into a helicopter in the air. You know? He's invincible. It's just sort of lost from Die Hard 1. It's not Terminator."

  
  If this weren't a Die Hard film, it would have been a solid PG-13 2000s techno action flick starring Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Maggie Q, Timothy Olyphant, Cliff Curtis and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
  I trick myself to thinking it's the latter.....but every now and then I hear characters say "McClane" and I am reminded that this belongs in that universe!

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  Die Hard and Die Hard With A Vengeance remain the two highlights of this franchise by a fair distance, but this fourth venture for John McClane isn't half as bad as I'd remembered, and despite Justin Long's annoying performance this has all the aspects we'd come to expect from a Die Hard film.
  Bruce Willis will always be John McClane for action fans of a certain age. John McTiernan may not be involved in this one, but director Len Wiseman gives Willis his usual sarcastic overtones as he gets drawn into a cyber-terrorist attack on America. Saving hacker Justin Long from the instigators, he's soon up to his neck in bodies and bullets. This installment comes with a large amount…