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November 22, 2007

"Live Free Or Die Hard"

Elaine and I curled up on the couch last night to watch the fourth installment in John McClane's legendary string of bad luck - Live Free Or Die Hard.

It's got some flaws, and it's waaaaaay over the top (to the point of silliness), but it wasn't too bad.

I consider the original Die Hard to be one of the finest action pictures ever made - thrilling, smart, well-written, and genuinely exciting (and I'm embarrassed to say how many times I've seen it - let's just say I could write good-sized chunks of the script from memory). Die Hard 2: Die Harder was an atrocious piece of crap (thank you, Renny Harlin - don't you have another Cutthroat Island or Deep Blue Sea to work on?); Die Hard With A Vengeance was a good return to form.

The fourth one, though ... I was worried.

Originally called "Die Hard 4.0", the plot is pretty simple: bad guy hackers break in to the nation's utilities, banking and traffic systems and begin shutting everything down. McClane, as the old-school 'analog guy in a digital world' figures out what's going on and starts busting heads. He's got help, too, in the form of Justin Long ("Hello, I'm a Mac"), a hacker who inadvertently built some of the software being used by the bad guys.

Flaws abound. The film's got a zillion plot holes; the computers all run "HollywoodOS"; the feds are silly and incompetent (standard for the franchise, but still); the hackers have amazing, godlike abilities to control any electronic device, anywhere; and so on.

But perhaps the biggest problem is that Bruce Willis' character has, somehow, become The Terminator. At one point i expected him to put on some sunglasses, extend his hand to Sarah Connor and say, "Come with me if you want to live."

Nothing kills him. Nothing. Falls off a building? Gets up again. Thrown out a window? Grabs a truck on the ground floor and crashes it into an elevator shaft (really). Blows up a fighter jet with a semi(!), slides down a slab of broken freeway at a 60-degree angle as a huge fireball goes off over his head, and, uh, limp for a few scenes afterward. [Insert obligatory, "I'm gettin' too old for this shit" line here.]

One of the things I loved about Die Hard was that McClane was human - you shoot him, he bleeds. He gets hurt and angry and really damaged as the movie goes on, and it adds an element of risk for the audience - what's gonna happen to this guy? It was such a nice change from all the crappy Stallone flicks from the mid-'80s (Cobra?, anyone?) where the good guys are all superhuman, and the bad guys are just Bond-esque henchmen.

Live Free is still pretty good - I was entertained, even as I found myself rolling my eyes. I just miss the John McClane of the '80s.

Ah, well.

Rental.

Posted by Gavin Shearer at November 22, 2007 9:25 AM. Posted to Entertainment.

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