Die Hard 4.0

Hacker Matt Farrell, not knowing who he is working for, finishes work on a computer program and sends it to Mai Linh, who advises her boss and lover, Thomas Gabriel, that they can now proceed with their evil plan. The criminal mastermind begins killing hackers by exploding their computers remotely, and commencing the initial stages of a computer attack on US government networks.

Elsewhere, a young couple is making out in a car. Detective John McClane breaks it up; the girl turns out to be his estranged daughter Lucy. She leaves in a huff, refusing to acknowledge her father's last name but calling herself instead by her mother's maiden name, Gennaro. Meanwhile, The FBI command center's computers are momentarily interrupted, leading Deputy Director Bowman to order a roundup of all the hackers who could conceivably have been involved. McClane is sent to pick up Farrell, and his arrival interrupts Gabriel's remote detonation of Farrell's computer. Gabriel's assassins have the apartment under surveillance, and open fire. McClane kills several thugs who enter the apartment. The thugs finally blow up Farrell's computer, destroying the apartment. McClane and Farrell escape down the fire escape, McClane killing various henchmen on the way and Farrell marvelling at McClane's heroics.

McClane makes it to Washington DC with his charge. At the temporary FBI office, Farrell notices the pictures of the dead hackers on the wall. Farrell and McClane are redirected by the FBI to another office so that Farrell can be interrogated. While they are on their way to the the new office, Gabriel begins downloading a huge quantity of significant data from some mysterious government source onto his own computers, and shuts down the network controlling the traffic signals. Chaos on the roads ensues. McClane, Farrell, and their police escort attempt to contact the police to have a route opened for them, but have their radio communication intercepted by Gabriel and Linh, who direct them to an ambush. McClane suspects their communication has been intercepted, tests Linh by asking her a trick question, and reveals he knows she's a fake. Gabriel gets on the radio and advises McClane he knows everything about him, and wipes out his 401K. Our heroes attempt to evade the ambush, but are set upon by helicopter. McClane and Farrell escape the ambush in a cop car, and are chased into a tunnel by the helicopter. Gabriel opens the traffic on both sides of the tunnel, sandwiching our heroes in a massive pileup in the middle. McClane drives the cop car straight out of the tunnel and jumps at the last second, launching the car into the helicopter and killing the thugs.

McClane and Farrell escape on foot. As they try to contact the FBI via cell phone, they discover that the communication networks are down. Farrell reveals that he recognized some of the dead hackers from their pictures, and that he innocently wrote some code that may be being used in this computer attack, which appears to be a three-stage plan to cripple the United States by attacking its information infrastructure. The next stage will be to take out the power grid; this cannot be done remotely but requires intervention at the actual physical plants. Farrell reconfigures the cellphone to use a different network to allow them to communicate. McClane and Farrell commandeer an abandoned car. By pretending to be the son of its owner in a medical emergency, Farrell gets OnStar to remotely start it for them. They set off for the main power station controlling the Eastern seaboard.

Linh and a group of henchmen, disguised as FBI agents, infiltrate and take over the power station. As they commence shutdown procedures, McClane and Farrell arrive at the station. Their presence is detected, and henchmen dispatched to dispatch them. McClane and Farrell fight their way to the station's command center, McClane fights Linh, and Farrell manages to abort the shutdown sequence. McClane finally kills Linh by driving a truck into her and down an elevator shaft, where the truck explodes at the bottom. Seeing that the shutdown hasn't taken place yet, Gabriel calls Linh's cell phone. McClane answers and tells Gabriel that his plan has been foiled and Linh killed. Enraged, Gabriel redirects all the natural gas in the pipelines to converge on the power station. Farrell notices this on one of the computer screens, and he and McClane take shelter just before the station explodes. The destruction of the station causes a massive power blackout over Washington and much of the Eastern seaboard. Lucy McClane is caught in an elevator in the blackout.

Farrell and McClane go to visit "The Warlock" in Baltimore, who Farrell describes as an Internet Jedi. Traffic being a nightmare, McClane decides to fly the helicopter that Linh and her henchmen had used to arrive at the power station. McClane reveals he had a few flying lessons, but never completed the course; they have a rough landing in Baltimore. Meanwhile, Gabriel and a few select henchmen kill his other remaining employees and, travelling light, set out in a semi-trailer with a mobile computer command center in the back.

The Warlock lives in his mother's basement where he has set up his own "command center" -- an impressive collection of computers running on his own generators, interspersed with geek memorabilia. The Warlock is suspicious of the police, but reluctantly agrees to help. He reveals that Gabriel was formerly a highly-placed FBI computer security director, responsible for building much of the system, who discovered its vulnerabilities to attack. When Gabriel brought these vulnerabilities to the attention of his supervisors, ultimately interrupting a meeting of the Joint Chiefs to do so, he was denounced and publicly humiliated. The Warlock shows McClane and Farrell that one facility is still running and drawing massive power loads. This turns out to be the facility from which Gabriel was downloading data, and which Gabriel and several thugs have now infiltrated and taken over. Gabriel is alerted to Warlock's intrusions; he traces the intrusion back to Warlock's basement command center, and commandeers Warlock's computer and webcam to communicate with the group in Warlock's basement. He shows McClane images of his daughter in the elevator, and advises that he is going to get her. McClane sets off to find and kill Gabriel; he tells Farrell to stay behind, but Farrell insists on helping him. Lucy is brought to Gabriel at the data facility; a chip off the old block, she fights all the way before being tied up.

McClane and Farrell communicate with Bowman and show him an image of Gabriel. Bowman is dismayed; he tells them that the facility still running was designed by Gabriel as a failsafe in the event of an attack on the nation's infrastructure; it contains a backup of all the financial data from stock markets, corporations, and government agencies. Gabriel apparently intends to download this information onto mobile hard drives, allowing him to undetectably siphon off billions of dollars.

McClane and Farrell head to the data facility, and Bowman orders an F-35 fighter plane dispatched to the facility. Gabriel is alerted to their presence, and obtains the go codes for the fighter plane by accessing the military's data banks. Farrell, using one of the computers at the facility, manages to encrypt all the data that Gabriel has downloaded, making it useless to them without the decryption key which he alone knows. He is subsequently captured by Gabriel's thug and brought to the control center where Lucy is also captive. Lucy advises him he will need to reach down and find a bigger set of balls. McClane kills the various thugs sent to stop him, and communicates with Farrell via one of the thugs' walkie-talkies. Gabriel attempts to talk McClane down but is unable to do so. He puts Lucy on the radio, to "talk some sense" into her father, but she aids him by telling him that there are only five bad guys left. The bad guys escape in two vehicles: Gabriel, two thugs, and the captives in an emergency services van, and one thu
g in a semi-trailer carrying their portable computer control center. McClane jumps onto the back of the semi-truck as it leaves the facility, climbs to the cab, shoots the driver through the door, and takes over the truck, chasing the remaining bad guys and their captives in the van. In the van, Gabriel orders Farrell to unlock the data, but Farrell refuses, knowing that this is his only bargaining chip and that Gabriel will kill him once he has the data back.

Gabriel realizes they are being chased. He uses the go codes to tell the F-35 pilot to destroy the semi-truck. The F-35 fires various missiles and machine guns at the truck, virtually destroying it and a large portion of a highway overpass. As the truck begins to slide backwards down a destroyed ramp, McClane falls out of the cab and down the back of the ravaged trailer. The plane is about to deliver the coup de grace when it is damaged by a chunk of falling pavement. McClane falls onto the plane's wing. The pilot ejects, McClane slides down the spiralling plane and jumps onto another section of destroyed ramp, sliding down the ramp as the jet crashes and explodes just behind him.

The van carring the bad guys and captives enters a warehouse. McClane pursues them. Gabriel orders Farrell to enter the code to decrypt the information. Farrell refuses and is shot in the leg by Gabriel. When Gabriel puts the gun to Lucy's head and says he will count to ten, Farrell gives in and begins to enter the code. McClane arrives and shoots one of the henchmen, but is in turn shot in the shoulder by Gabriel. McClane dives behind a car, his gun on the ground near Farrell. McClane goes for his gun but is grabbed by Gabriel from behind. Standing behind McClane, Gabriel taunts him and tortures him by sticking his gun into the bullet wound in McClane's shoulder. Gabriel tells McClane that his epitaph will read "Always in the wrong place at the wrong time." McClane replies that it might read "Yippee ki yay, mother-" and pulls the trigger on the gun, shooting himself through the shoulder and killing Gabriel. Farrell has grabbed McClane's gun and shoots the other thug.

The FBI arrive and provide medical attention to McClane, Lucy, and Farrell. Farrell and Lucy separately indicate to McClane their romantic interest in each other. Lucy indicates that, for today at least, she's a McClane.