blacksundae

McCLANE
[in Austrian accent]
Come with me if you want to live.

MAC GUY
Dude, you’ve changed.

Live Free or Die Hard, 2007
Dir: Len Wiseman
[rating:2]

First off, a recap. Die Hard was Die Hard in a — well, it was Die Hard. That means it’s one of the greatest action films of all time. Die Hard II: Die Harder was Die Hard in an airport. Die Hard: With a Vengeance was Die Hard in a torrent of Sam Jackson’s obscenities.* Following that pattern, I suppose Live Free or Die Hard would have to be Die Hard in an alternate universe where both John McClane and computer hackers are capable of just about anything.

The “McClane” character here is nothing like the one in previous films, instead being an indestructible throwback to the 80s action heroes that the original film made look cartoonish. Instead of his usual world-weary humor, we have bitter one-liners that are sometimes just crude (or cruel).

We don’t fair much better with the bad guys. I’m fine with the unrealistic depiction of technology here (or maybe I’m just numb to it), but the use of omnipotent computer hackers as the heavies is just lazy writing. We knew the bad guys’ limitations in the previous installments and we knew McClane’s as well. Here, McClane is an unstoppable machine and the hackers have infinite power because everything’s online! This is not so — especially not of a decades-old elevator during a region-wide blackout. Even if this were accurate, the fact that that’s the central conceit of the story drains every last bit of suspense out of the proceedings. Technology is magical here. The hackers pull one impossible thing after another out of their hat, while John “Kevlar” McClane just pounds through henchman after henchman, wincing over his superficial wounds the entire way. Highlight the following line for a spoiler:

After a bunch of this stuff, McClane somehow (magically) stumbles upon the hackers’ hideout and pounds through them too. The end.

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh. The movie’s well shot and edited, the action scenes are fun and the stunt work is, for the most part, pleasingly practical. I probably would have enjoyed the hell out of this movie if it weren’t pretending to be a Die Hard film.

*”Zeus. As in father of Apollo? Mt. Olympus? Don’t fuck with me or I’ll shove a lightning bolt up your ass? Zeus! You got a problem with that?”