Twelve years have passed since John McClane, everyone's favourite antihero, was saving the day and sending ultra-cool bad guys spectacularly into oblivion.

The world has changed, movie goers' tastes have changed; the mass audience that will go and see Die Hard 4.0 probably was not born when the original film hit the screen in 1988.

Ironically, the teenage crowd will hardly appreciate the 2007 film's most impressive quality - its superior old-school stunts relying on as little digital assistance as possible.

Those who will appreciate the film's rawness and grit, however, will also note that this set of McClane's unsought adventures are not on a par with any of the three preceding Die Hard films.

For all its technical virtues, this one lacks the logic of the first, the invention of the second, the breathless pace of the third, and most sadly, the humour of all three. Die Hard 4.0 is an impressive action film, conjuring movie magic without the sterile feel of digital heroics, but as an addition to the series, it falls short of the established standard.

The film makes a reasonable attempt to speculate on the world's dependence on computers and show the havoc that may be caused by bad guys armed not with submachine guns and missiles, but with superior algorithms and a fast internet connection.

As the centre of today's civilisation is paralysed with the touch of a button, the movie makes the poetic case that it takes an old-school reluctant hero to save the day.

McClane is the analogue cop in the digital age who takes on the job, and for extra safety he is provided with fire-proof personal motivation - the baddies kidnap his daughter Lucy. Said bad guys are led by disgruntled computer wizard Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Oliphant), who wants to disable America's entire infrastructure and steal the country's financial records after the government refuses to support his views. The sinister software that takes over the power grids, TV frequencies and what-have-you was commissioned in bits to unsuspecting computer geeks and hackers whom Gabriel now kill in order to eliminate all traces implicating him.

One of these hackers is Matt Farrell (Justin Long) who is accidentally saved by McClane who is sent to bring him to FBI headquarters for questioning. By the time they get to the FBI offices, hell has broken loose: cars crash on every intersection, government buildings are being evacuated because of anthrax alerts, anarchy-inciting montages are aired simultaneously on all TV channels. Farrell is only one to see what is happening and McClane decides to use his skills to bring the bad guys down because it seems that nobody else will.

As McClane hurls cars at helicopters and takes on hovering fighter jets, Farrell uses his mobile phone to sabotage the bad guys' plans left right and centre, and seeks guidance from "The Warlock" (Kevin Smith), the hacker supreme who still lives with his mother.

The outcome of all this is never in question, but bizarrely the McClane of 2007 that Willis comes up with is closer to his weary steel-jawed self in, say, Unbreakable or The Jackal rather than to the resourceful and droll McClane everybody remembers so fondly.

Physically, he still looks the part, but it seems his heart is some place else.

The other major grievance is that the big set-pieces, impressive as they are, feel shoehorned into the story and do not advance it in any meaningful way: consider the blowing up of a power plant or the collapsing freeway. As these all pile up, upon exiting the theatre one will not feel disappointed, but will get the peculiar urge to watch one of the previous films again, rather than this one.