Live
Free Or Die Hard (Theatrical Film
Review)
Stars: Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Cliff Curtis,
Maggie Q
Director: Len Wiseman
Critic's rating: 4 out of 10
Review by Chuck O'Leary
It's doubtful that if Bruce Willis hadn't starred in so many flops
in recent years that he'd be doing a fourth Die Hard at this point, a full 12 years since
the last one played in theaters. But he's had a lot more misses than
hits lately and he's back for another go-around as wisecracking
one-man-anti-terrorist-unit John McClane -- hey send this guy to Iraq or
Afghanistan.
The first Die Hard
was a highly entertaining surprise from the summer of 1988 about a New York cop
who single-handedly defeats a squad of extortionists/terrorists in a Los
Angeles high rise. It marked a career high for director John McTiernan,
who has proven time and time again since that he's quite
overrated. The film also made a movie star out of TV star Bruce
Willis, and spawned two hokey, considerably less thrilling sequels in the
'90s; Renny Harlin helmed the overwrought Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990) and McTiernan returned
to direct the incredibly forgettable third installment, Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995),
to little effect.
Die Hard was also responsible for revolutionizing the action genre
for the next ten years, creating an entire subgenre of action film about a lone
man taking on group of heavily armed extortionists/terrorists. Under Siege, Passenger 57, Cliffhanger, Sudden Death, The Rock and Air Force One are just some of the subsequent
films obviously inspired by Die Hard.
The formula was wearing thin long before a little event called
9/11 happened, a real-life catastrophe that immediately made all the
aforementioned titles relics of a bygone era. But instead of taking a cue
from True Lies, a hit
'90s action film that's now more relevant than ever, Hollywood has continued
making the same kind of safe pre-9/11 escapism while refusing to acknowledge
where the real threat is coming from; it's a matter of political correctness and
Hollywood's political agenda.
We saw it last year in the horrid Déjà Vu, in which a disgruntled former American
patriot gone bad is the film's terrorist villain, and we see it once
again in Live Free Or Die
Hard, a film that mentions 9/11 several times, but conveniently
and cowardly (just like Déjà Vu) never
even mentions al-Qaida as a suspect, when al-Qaida or some other Islamic
extremist group would obviously be an immediate suspect if all
the electricity in America was ever shut down.
Just like Jim Caviezel in Déjà
Vu (yeah, knowing Hollywood, I'm sure the guy who played Jesus
is the perfect embodiment of a terrorist), the fourth Die Hard has another white guy
(Timothy Olyphant) as its terrorist arch-villain, clearly the kind of phony PC
move that's killing movies nowadays. His henchmen are a mixed ethnic
lot, consisting of several Europeans, an attractive Asian woman skilled in kung
fu (Maggie Q) and one guy who seems vaguely Middle Eastern,
though you can bet the house that it's never mentioned explicitly.
It's probably not a coincidence that a dark-skinned New Zealand-born actor
(Cliff Curtis), who could easily pass for an Arab and has played Arabs in other
films, is cast as the sympathetic head FBI agent -- am I the only one who notices
all the politically correct nuttiness in contemporary movies?
Olyphant, who played the sheriff on Deadwood, is cast as Thomas
Gabriel, a former U.S. online security expert who warned the government
that the country's computerized security was outdated and pleaded for
upgrades. Instead of heeding his warnings, however, the government
ignored him and then fired him. But instead of taking his story to 60 Minutes, Gabriel went psycho and
will now use his very knowledge of the system he helped design to bring America
to a standstill. With the assistance of fellow hackers, he'll blackout
all three of America's power grids to shut off all electricity from coast to
coast, causing mass chaos while extorting billions for himself.
On top of being a safe, phony villain, Gabriel
is also a thoroughly generic villain who's a long way from Alan
Rickman's hissable chief heavy in the first one.
Now enter our hero, John McClane. He's now divorced and
estranged from his two kids, including a teenage daughter named Lucy
(Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who doesn't have much affection for dear old
dad. And like the actor playing him, McClane has noticeably less hair on
his head than when we first met him. The film opens with McClane,
still a NYPD cop, being assigned to pick up a computer hacker on
behalf of the FBI. It turns out to be a college student named Matt
Ferrell (Justin Long), who knows all there is to know about everything
high-tech. Just after McClane arrives at Matt's apartment, the young man
is targeted by men with machine guns sent by Gabriel. From this point on,
Matt becomes McClane's sidekick as they're propelled from one extreme
situation after another. There's lots of gunfire and big explosions and
lots of nameless henchmen who bite the dust, but since this one is PG-13 (much
to the chagrin of many fans), few blood squibs are used. There
are also too many shots of information being typed on to computer
screens, something that's never particularly exciting.
Written without any regard for reality by Mark Bomback, and
directed by Len Wiseman, whose only two previous credits are two abysmal Underworld movies, this fourth
Die Hard is well
paced and boasts a few imaginative action sequences, but can't suspend our
disbelief because it takes place in a PC fantasy world. Another
annoying thing about the film is how it panders to the youth market
by purposely inserting teenyboppers played by Long and Winstead,
and casting writer/director/hipster Kevin Smith as an eccentric computer geek
for comic relief. Apparently the powers that be feel Bonnie Bedelia
is now too old now to reappear as McClane's ex-wife. Ditto for William
Atherton, who played the irritating, pompous news reporter in the first two.
Live Free Or Die Hard is the third weak sequel in a creaky
franchise that should have remained dormant. Hopefully Indiana Jones
and John Rambo will have better luck next year when their creaky franchises are
resurrected with belated fourth installments.
