For those who don't remember, the original "Die Hard" ended with a bad anti-climax. John McClane (Bruce Willis) wraps a chain around the neck of Karl (Alexander Godunov) and hoists him into the air like a flag. Yep, he's dead.Wait, he's faking it. Karl comes alive at a rather inopportune time and is immediately shot. It's a ridiculous moment.

Karl clearly didn't know when to quit. The "Diehard" series has never known when to quit. In fact, does anyone in Hollywood know when to stop? I'd say not. "Live Free or Die Hard", the fourth film of the series, also doesn't know the destructive power of excess.

Director Len ("Underworld") Wiseman keeps ramping up the action until the audience begins to wonder when the dinosaurs are going to emerge from the ground and try to stomp on McClane because there's literally nowhere for the director to go on his "insane situations for John McClane to escape" list.

The story involves an attempt by Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) to bring down virtually every computer system in the U.S. It's what's known in hacker slang as a "fire sale". When Gabriel begins by shutting down most infrastructure computers, including the FBI and the transportation systems, Detective McClane is assigned to recover Matt Farrell (Justin Long), a computer hacker who may be a suspect. Turns out he's not a suspect, but a target for Gabriel's assassins. Naturally, and despite all odds, McClane systematically thwarts every assassination attempt.

Beginning with McClane's escape of several machine gun toting bad guys, Wiseman tries to one-up each successive scene. Thus, when McClane manages to jump a police car off a barrier into a helicopter, there doesn't seem to be anywhere to go. Yet, we're then treated to a harrowing bit of theater involving an SUV hanging in an elevator shaft and the film's "Karl" moment, McClane jumping out of a semi-truck and onto the back of a fighter jet.

It was also particularly amusing to watch Gabriel try to kill McClane and Farrell by rerouting natural gas back into a power plant thereby causing a massive explosion. Not that I doubt the explosive power of natural gas, but I'm pretty sure that flame on my water heater serves a purpose. I guess since Gabriel reroutes traffic and cars crash and explode, natural gas will just do the same thing.

If my theory is correct, nobody associated with this film knows that "Diehard 5" is a bad idea. Maybe that means that John McClane will be leaping from airliner to airliner in mid-air or killing bad guys with the power of his spit. It's not something to look forward to.