10 Lame Movie Heroes It Was Impossible To Root For

9. Matthew Farrell - Die Hard 4.0

Lh2 John McClane is a hard person to match up with a sidekick. The clear winner in this category would be Samuel L. Jackson as Zeus who matches Willis' badassery with little issue. The most recent attempt saw us being forced to empathise with the emotional equivalent of a slab of concrete in the form of Jai Courtney, whose whiny father son relationship arc did not do the franchise any favours. I'm landing in between these two with the character played by Justin Long, the most useless sidekick of them all, Matthew Farrell. In a plot derived from a 1997 article on cyber terrorism called 'A Farewell to Arms' we are told to believe that Timothy Olyphant and a van full of laptops could take over mainland USA. Being an old timer, John McClane doesn't know how to use these new fangled computer doodads so is forced to enlist the help of hacker extraordinaire Matthew Farrell. So begins an awkward attempt at rapport between the two of them which just comes off as Justin Long saying how cool Bruce Willis is repeatedly as things explode around him. While at times he tries to be brave and battle the enemy with computers it never really pays off to much effect, proving McClane's theory that the old ways are the best. So they fight through all that the baddies sent their way in typical Die Hard fashion by throwing cars at helicopters and crushing people down lift shafts until they catch up to Olyphant's villain. After the catchphrase of the whole Die Hard franchise is censored and everyone is sad, the film decides to twist the knife by insinuating that John McClane's badass daughter (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) would instantly go to mush over the self proclaimed social pariah that is Farrell.
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A pop culture mad writer from the North East who loves films, television and debating them with whoever will listen. Follow me on Twitter @Johno_Patterson