Live Free or Die Hard

Skip it. Twelve years after Vengeance, with a cyberterrorism plot, a teenage sidekick and an American certificate that required cutting the language and most of the blood out of a series whose appeal was partly that it had both.

The deeper problem is not the rating. It is that McClane has become indestructible. The character people liked was a man who was out of his depth and bled for every inch of ground. This McClane surfs a collapsing motorway, fights a jet from the cab of a lorry, and kills a helicopter by launching a car into it, and at no point does the film suggest any of this should have killed him. He is no longer unlucky. He is Superman with a singlet.

There are things in it that work. Timothy Olyphant is a decent villain, the opening half hour before the scale runs away is tense, and Willis is committed throughout, playing weariness because the script will not let him play fear. Justin Long is given the thankless job of explaining the plot.

If you do watch it, find the international cut, which is rated R, restores the profanity including the line the series is known for, and is a noticeably less sanded-down film. It is still not a good one.