This is a throwback to a time when action movies were measured by the number of cars they crashed, which means you have to take the 1980s good – muscular, CGI-light stunt work – with the 1980s bad (namely a level of mindlessness that makes Ocean’s Thirteen look like an art film). By now, Bruce Willis’ John McClane – who must stop a computer genius (Timothy Olyphant) from crashing the country’s digital infrastructure – is mostly empty attitude, but there is still a nihilistic giddiness to the action sequences that makes you laugh, often against your better judgement. At its best, this echoes the creative, comic chaos of an old Road Runner cartoon.
