Published: June 29, 2007 10:52 am      

'Die Hard' resurrects '80s-style action

3Live Free or Die Hard2 is the sort of movie you approach like last year1s 3Basic Instinct 22 or 3Rocky Balboa.2

You go in expecting the worst and figure you1ll at least get some laughs out of seeing an aging protagonist embarrassingly trying to reclaim old glory.

Luckily for Bruce Willis and the audience, his die-hard cop still has a lot of yippee-ki-yay in him, nearly 20 years after the first 3Die Hard.2

This fourth installment in the franchise, the first since 19951s 3Die Hard With a Vengeance,2 is the sort of generally welcome surprise that 3Rocky Balboa2 turned out to be, a reacquaintance with an old friend you didn1t think you would like any more, but do.

Let1s be clear. 3Live Free or Die Hard2 is silly, outlandish and painfully implausible, and it grows more so as director Len Wiseman revs up the climactic action sequences to preposterous extremes.

Yet for a pure summer power trip, it1s a decent throwback to the pure-brawn heyday of Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, an agreeable respite from today1s cartoonlike ballets of computer-generated action.

This time out, Willis1 John McClane still wisecracks, but he1s much more a stoic hard case than the yammering clown of earlier years. Divorced and disillusioned, McClane still takes his job as a New York City detective seriously, and he does it well.

One night, while staking out his college-age daughter, Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), to make sure her date keeps his hands to himself, McClane is dispatched to pick up a computer hacker and deliver him to the FBI in Washington for questioning.

Computer geek Matt Farrell (Justin Long) is one of many digital wizards the feds want to question after the bureau1s cyber-security division is hacked.

Moments after McClane shows up at Matt1s door, assassins bombard the apartment with gunfire, setting off a long July Fourth weekend for the cop and the hacker as they chase around trying to stay ahead of the bad guys and figure out who1s behind a computer incursion that cripples the nation.

Traffic signals go berserk, financial markets crash, airplanes are grounded, electricity is cut and federal buildings are evacuated because of false anthrax alarms.

With all their equipment and digital know-how, the feds, led by FBI guy Bowman (Cliff Curtis), are virtually hapless in tracking down the mastermind, bitter security expert Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant).

So of course, it1s left to McClane, an analog dinosaur who barely grasps the concept of cell phones, to hunt the man down, aided by sidekick Farrell.

Ridiculous as the action scenes are, the early ones are a clever, thrilling blend of digital imagery and old-fashioned muscle. The first two-thirds of the movie builds up enough good will that viewers may play along when director Wiseman (the 3Underworld2 movies) goes off the deep end with some insanely excessive stunts in the final act.

Among the highlights is a death-match between bruiser McClane and Gabriel1s lover and accomplice (Maggie Q), a lethal martial-arts fighter.

With McClane taking blows that should leave him for dead, their duel accentuates the impossible levels to which the filmmakers take their die-hard notion. McClane is less a human than an unstoppable, 3Terminator2-style cyborg, continually bouncing back with another punch and a new joke.

Willis shows nothing he hasn1t shown a dozen times before, but he does it all well, delivering steely stares, writhing in pain and complaining in muttered soliloquy about his lot in life.

He and Long develop a nice father-son camaraderie through their adventures, while Winstead fills in for the absent Bonnie Bedelia, McClane1s wife from the first two movies, playing the spunky damsel inevitably drawn into the peril.

Filmmaker Kevin Smith adds an amusing bit part as a distrustful computer nerd holed up in a 3command center2 in his mom1s basement.

While Olyphant is adequate as the ruthless, calculating Gabriel, he suffers a similar fate as William Sadler and Jeremy Irons, the villains of the second and third 3Die Hard2 flicks: Namely, that no one seems like a truly worthy opponent for McClane after the deliciously flamboyant performance of bad guy Alan Rickman in the original 3Die Hard.2

3Live Free or Die Hard,2 a 20th Century Fox release, is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, language and a brief sexual situation. Running time: 130 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.