How do you celebrate the 25th anniversary of one of the all-time great action movies? If youre Twentieth Century Fox, you rush a sequel from the writer of Hitman and the director of The Omen remake into production. Playing more like a very poor mans 24 movie than a Die Hard picture, sequel #4 is a ginger-haired stepchild that deserves to be beaten at every available opportunity. There isnt a single memorable moment in the entire film, and nothing in Skip Woodss screenplay suggests he did anything more than dust off an unproduced script, change the names and ask the studio, Will this do? Youre off to a bad start when a character who hates flying has no problem taking a plane to Russia on a moments notice, but why stop there? Randomly throw in an unexciting chase sequence, add a few flat and unremarkable villains, sprinkle with crap one-liners and presto! youve made a worse movie than Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
