Die Hard 4

Below is the review of 'Live Free or Die Hard', the 4th 'Die Hard' film. The whole review, as well as my overall rating of the movie, is major spoiler-territory. Click expand if you've seen the movie or don't care about me spoiling it.



So, first off, I give this film an A-. It's good on its own, but somehow not up to par with the rest of the series.

Now, let's start with what the film did right. The action scenes are phenomenal, McClane is back, kicking ass and taking names (or not even stopping to take names). The characters are great: John is the no-nonsense cop we've come to love, Lucy is a tough cookie, the bad guy is determined and scary and the henchmen come in a variety of flavors, ranging from Red Shirts to the jaw-dropping Mai and the parkour-trained Rand. The ensemble of actors also impressed me, as the producers didn't just use no-names to fill the smaller roles of the government officials. Kevin Smith's presence sort of surprised me, but the character wasn't a throw-away cameo, for which I'm grateful.

The computer hacks weren't all idiotic Hollywood-esque plot devices with no real-world basis. Sure, there were a few points that made me cringe, but nowhere near as many as there could be. For truly cringe-worthy technobable and a disgusting portrayal of technology, see 'Man of the Year'. Which is probably one of the very few reasons to see that movie. Moving on.

Of course, the overall production style and the Michael Bay-inspired action sequences and camera angles deserve a mention and a few extra points: the action scenes were very well done, taking the camera incredibly close to the action in some shots and doing wonderful long views in others. In particular, I enjoyed the overhead views of the helicopter flying around DC area as, almost outside the viewing area, we can see the car collisions that were just then triggered by the bad guys.

Of course, and this is a really big point, the rating of the film is increased by the subject matter. I am sick and tired of bad guys claiming to be patriots and "serving the interest of the country". This has been claimed by every hack Bad Guy in recent history: every season of '24' presents us with yet another white man behind the curtains who claims to love this country so much that he is willing to place millions of Americans at risk to protect them. Somehow, that makes sense to the writers. Whatever. The bad guy in the film is a similarly-themed patriot who is doing the country a favor, but the difference here is that what he is doing makes sense, on some level. While I may not agree 100% on the methods used, I must say that I see eye to eye with him on the underlying problem: America has not learned anything in the past 6 years. 9/11 caught the country with its pants down, and nothing has changed since. Katrina was, by definition, a clusterfuck. The federal systems in place for dealing with disasters, be they natural or man-made, are ineffective and incapable of preventing or dealing with anything other than a cat stuck in a tree. (My "favorite" example of the system in action is the foiling of the 2007 Fort Dix terrorist "plot": the government caught on to the plot after the idiots went to Circuit City to turn their training tapes into DVD's and an employee forwarded the tape to the feds.) The systems in place are overgrown, immobile, red-tape covered, outdated dinosaurs. I agree that a shakeup is what is needed. Certainly not as extreme as shutting down the entire country, but at least they're acknowledging that the problem exists.

Now, on to the bad. The worst thing about the film is that it takes so long to get started and doesn't maintain the pace consistently. There are great action sequences, but they are spread out, and in between them is slow chatter that attempts to explain the plot and character motivations. Boring!

The music is also a let-down: I didn't notice any of the scores from the first three movies popping up. What happened to the good ol' 'Die Hard' music? I miss it. That, and McClane's hair, but I can forgive that, somewhat.

Actually, that's it for the bad. As long as you can stay awake through the parts of the film that aren't filled with gunfire, you'll be set.

Oh, I forgot something: this movie is rated PG-13. Yeah, go figure, a 'Die Hard' film that's not R. But they pulled it off. I think it was through bribery. There is a lot of profanity in the film, and even two times when McClane drops the f-bomb, but in those instances there is too much gunfire to make the words out clearly. This is a bit of a detriment, but not seriously. Even if the film loses the sailor language of the first three movies, it still has enough and doesn't resort to idiotic replacements like 'gosh darn it'. That would have made me a very sad panda.

That's all for now. Watch the movie, it's good.