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.
----
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.