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Director Kevin Smith does a funny eleventh-hour cameo as a chubby computer whiz called the Warlock. Timothy Olyphant, as the sneering supervillain, projects a somewhat generic malice, but the kung-fu star Maggie Q, as his ice-queen girlfriend, dies almost as hard as McClane and looks fabulous doing it. But Justin Long, who looks like a smarter Keanu Reeves, is endearing as the slacker sidekick who carries his messenger bag even into the jaws of doom. The Die Hard movies belong so completely to Bruce Willis, his indestructible physique and world-weary way with a one-liner, that it seems almost spurious to mention the rest of the cast. To make sure his scheme is bug-proof, Gabriel hires a bunch of freelance hackers-basically, nerds in basements-and once they’ve served his purpose, picks them off with extreme prejudice. Gabriel’s motives-do you really need to know? There’s anti-government paranoia involved (Lenin is quoted at one point) and of course billions of dollars to be moved into Gabriel’s bank account from, well, everyone else’s, but essentially, the guy is just an asshole. The requisite evildoer, computer genius Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) wants to shut down the entire country’s telecommunications, utilities, and financial infrastructure in a three-part digital attack known as a “fire sale” (because “everything must go”). In the first chapter of the franchise since 9/11-hell, the first chapter since Clinton’s first term in office-the stakes are considerably higher. It’s been nearly 20 years since Bruce Willis appeared as John McClane in the original Die Hard, and 12 years since the third installment, Die Hard With a Vengeance, in which he saved New York from Jeremy Irons.