John McClane?
Check.
Terrorists bent on evil deeds to make billions of dollars?
Check.
"Yippee-Ki-Yay, Motherfucker?"
Well... half a check.
"Live Free or Die Hard" resurrects John McClane (Bruce Willis), the original one man anti-terror unit, who gets things done with bullets, explosions and snappy one-liners.
Back for the fourth movie in the series, McClane now faces dastardly cyber-terrorists bent on shutting down the country's infrastructure with the idea of making off with billions (or trillions, either way it's a whole lot) of dollars in the process.
McClane is once again "that guy," as he just happens to be in the right place at the right time to make things blow up and make bad guys dead.
Tagging along with McClane is super hacker Matt Farrell (Justin Long), who is there to provide moral support and counter-cyber-terrorism, in addition to occasionally reminding us how badass McClane is by playing the "don't shoot me I'm just a nerd" character, which compliments McClane's
unstoppable bravado.
The plot is pretty much irrelevant, all viewers (at least those new to the series) need to know is that McClane lives free, as opposed to the alternative, and the bad guys get to be the ones who die hard.
And they do.
Dropped down an elevator shaft in an exploding car, shredded in some kind of whirling fan device, having their helicopter hit by a car.
Yes, thats right. McClane can drive cars into helicopters. Do not question McClane.
But what is his motivation
for destruction?
Besides the fact that they're terrorists, the evil doers try to kill Farrell while in McClane's care, try to bring down the entire U.S. computer system and, to top it all off, kidnap his daughter.
Of course, this just pisses him off, and he ends up killing them all. (Suprise! The good guys win in the end.)
If you can get past the obvious ridiculousness of a 60-year-old rolling out of cars at full speed and beating up sexy karate ladies, the movie is fun to watch. It's amped up on testosterone, and there is no shortage of action.
The major letdown of this movie, and the reason it isn't as good as the first three, was the simple fact that it was rated PG-13, where the other "Die Hard" movies were rated R.
This may seem insignificant, but it puts a severe cramp in
McClane's style.
There is very little blood, and the deaths (although painful looking) are very much under-done. That means no sending bodies down in the elevator with a note reading, "Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho," stapled to the corpse.
And no swearing.
Now, this part I can't understand. The one line everyone waits for in the Die Hard movies (you know what I'm talking about) gets cut short. And, although craftily covered by a gunshot, the loss still stings me to my very core.
Is it so much to ask that McClane be allowed to drop one F-bomb for old times' sake?
In the end, the PG-13 rating turns a classic action hero into a badass, but with a clean mouth and a lot less blood on his hands. But there's still a lot on his face. And arms. And chest, where he got shot. Twice.
"Live Free or Die Hard" is an decent attempt at rejuvenating the series, but the formula suffers without an R rating.
