View Full Version : Live Free Or Die Hard


Ugly
06-28-2007, 03:04 PM
Short version: went to see it because I love me them Die Hard movies, and I absolutely fucking adore Mary Elizabeth Winestead. But it was directed by that Underworld making douche, so I was being disappointing. Ramblings commence below.

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NEEDS MORE MEAN
<img src="http://forums.netphoria.org/images/rating/rating_2.gif">

Live Free or Die Hard has entertainment value, but its cajhones have been chopped off. Die Hard has traditionally been R rated but this fourth installment is rated PG-13 (these are the U.S. classifications, in Canada we’re a tad more lax about excessive violence). Lethal Weapon was able to survive a PG-13 for its fourth installment because the characters changed over the movies. It became less about the violence, more about the wackiness and the interplay between Gibson and Glover. With Die Hard, John McClane (Bruce Willis) is still John McClane from movie one to movie four. Since he can’t be as foulmouthed and nasty as he can be, the newest flick suffers as a result. What’s the bloody point if he can’t even say his heroic, profanity-laden catchphrase without editing?

Not to say Willis isn’t trying, his mugging is amongst the film’s highlights. While his quips aren’t always the best, its still nice to see the action-guy-bad-one-liner from the 80s is still alive. But he should be allowed to swear frequently because, c’mon, its Die Hard! However, Willis is at his best when he’s in “Why-is-this-crap-happening-to-me” mode, and he’s able to elevate even the driest materiel.

And this materiel is pretty dry. Live Free starts with an annoying computer hacker, (Justin Long, aka the Mac Guy from the Mac/PC ads) being picked up by Detective John McClane (Willis). Meanwhile, a digital terrorist attack shuts down the U.S. computer infrastructure, led by a computer genius mastermind, Gabriel (Timothy Olympant in what is probably the most uninspired Die Hard bad guy performance ever compared to previous alums like Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons). When McClane and Mac Guy team up to shut down these hackers from hell, uninspired bad guy kidnaps McClane’s daughter, Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winestead, another one of the movie’s few bright spots. She’s very beautiful and is tougher than the damsel-in-distress you’d expect). So McClane must get his daughter back, and this time, its personal!

One of the biggest problems about this movie is Mac Guy who turns out to be even more pivotal to the film than McClane. The irritating factor is heightened because Mac Guy spends every second of this movie using his high-pitched voice to squeal about something. It’s a real shame he’s so annoying because McClane’s last partner was Samuel L. “The Man” Jackson. And now we have the Goddamn Mac Guy.

Another huge problem is the pacing. This movie is a longish 2 hours, and a lot of the non-action stuff is fairly useless. The gaps in between action sequences are interminable. There are a lot of scenes cutting back to the bad guys plots that we don’t care about, or the FBI investigation that we don’t care about, and many meaningless, Director-wanky, individual shots that go on too long. With some ruthless editing, it could have been a tight hour and a half.

There’re some real groaners in the boring, uninspired dialogue. The bad guy refers to a bunch of hired guns to look after his computer geeks as “hardware to (their) software.” When Mac Guy aghastly asks McClane, “Have you ever killed someone before?”, and McClane gives a somber response, its straight out of the action-movie cliche textbook. Characters refer to the digital terror attack as a “fire sale.” Don’t even try to understand the terminology, its just sounds too corny to be dramatic. When Mac Guy says, “Holy crow, America is under attack by a fire sale!!” it sounds about as threatening as, “Holy crow, America is under attack by a coupon booklet!!”

The action is a mixed bag, with a few decent shoot-outs and nifty fights here and there. Directed by Len Wiseman (Underworld), Live Free doesn’t even has a veneer of goth-chic cool his Underworld flicks did. Camera tricks that were palatable in Underworld clash horribly with Die Hard’s old-school feel. A lot of shots are CGI’ed unbelievably, the camera whizzes around so much that you can’t see a decent shot of McClane taking out a henchman, and some of the goons pull of such unbelievable acrobatics that you’ll wonder if a vampire escaped from Underworld. There are good action beats, such as the car-vs.-helicopter or car-vs.-ninja-chick, but Wiseman is so frantic that it numbs us. The final big action scene of truck vs. fighter jet is unbelievable chaos, even for a Die Hard movie. That’s saying something.

What sinks the film is that its too pretty, too ‘07, too safe. Maybe Die Hard belongs in the action movie heyday of the late ‘80s / early 90s, because when you take all the intensity out of it, you’re left with homogenized spectacle. The overt reliance on action clichés doesn’t help things, such as the movie ending with a standard closing scene of wounded action heroes talking by an ambulance. Live Free or Die Hard isn’t a good addition to the series, it’s a nu-style revamp that’s taken all nitty and left none of the gritty.

avian chaos
06-28-2007, 03:17 PM
I stopped reading after <img src="http://forums.netphoria.org/images/rating/rating_2.gif">

Ugly
06-28-2007, 05:42 PM
That's why the star-rating system is important. Full stars. Half stars are for sissies. I rate 'em 1- awful 2 - bad 3 - okay/good 4 - awesome 5 - fucking fantastic.

Mo
06-28-2007, 06:09 PM
Good review. I was afraid that it would turn out like that.

if there is a llama
06-28-2007, 06:28 PM
I'm tempted to see it just because it looks like a parody of itself.

I heard dialogue in a commercial that goes like this:

(Mac guy) "You just shot down a helicopter with a car!"

(Bruce Willis) "I ran out of bullets"

I picture Ranier Wolfcastle saying a line like that in the simpsons.

Is it at least entertaining if you set out to watch a bad movie?

Ugly
06-28-2007, 10:52 PM
Well, I didn't watch it expecting a bad movie, so I wasn't in that headspace. I kept hoping for it to become good. However, there are a few howlers of badness, the lamest being everything with the fucking Mac Guy. Wow, Justin Long is so gawdawful at everything. There are a couple of good, funny, lame one-liners ala "I'm thinking of holding another meeting ... in bed!"

Pretzel Logic
06-28-2007, 11:01 PM
it looks boring and very generic

Mo
06-28-2007, 11:23 PM
Willis was great on last night's Daily Show, though.

avian chaos
06-29-2007, 01:07 PM
I didn't read the long version of your review but I saw it last night and I'm pretty sure I disagree with everything you just said, Ugs.

jczeroman
06-29-2007, 03:19 PM
I'll go see it just for the title...

Corganist
06-30-2007, 08:02 PM
It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, but I had pretty low expectations. The only real problem I had with it was that it was very obvious in many scenes that the movie was shot with the intent of being R rated, and then edited down to a PG-13. There were at least a couple scenes where they clumsily dubbed some PG-13 dialogue over the original R rated dialogue and then tried to cover it up with quick camera cuts and wide angles. But you could still easily see that the characters' mouths were not matching up to what they were saying (or moving when they weren't saying anything at all). That really took me out of things at times.

I wouldn't say not to go see it, because I enjoyed it overall. But an unrated DVD release will probably be about 100 times better than this hacked up kiddie-fied version.

JokeyLoki
06-30-2007, 10:21 PM
I dunno, I thought it was pretty fantastic. The writing was pretty good for being a typical action movie. Kevin Smith's cameo made me giggle. It was enjoyable, and that's basically all I really wanted it to be.