Live Free or Die Hard
Len Wiseman, USA, 2007
Rating: 3.8

It’s been a pretty hectic couple of months. I was recently promoted to Editor in Chief at the weekly paper I’ve worked at for almost three years, and as you’ve no doubt noticed, Shaking Through has suffered as a result. I’m trying to get caught up with all the movies, books, comics and music I’ve experienced and meant to write about since May, but it’ll take awhile.

As busy as I’ve been, though, my average 13-plus hour day pales in comparison to the kind of overtime New York cop John McClane logs in the latest Die Hard installment. (How’s that for a segue?)

During a roundtable interview with Bruce Willis I attended awhile back, the movie star opined that he’s waited so long between Die Hard films (the last, you’ll recall, was 1995’s Die Hard With a Vengeance) because he was waiting for the right story. My own theory is that Willis waited this long to make McClane’s latest adventure seem more plausible. Die Hard films don’t just follow a typical case for McClane – as opposed to, say, the Dirty Harry series, or even the Lethal Weapon franchise, which sort of suggests that Detectives Riggs and Murtaugh find themselves at the center of adventures involving lots of explosions and property damage every other week. No, these movies hinge on the contrast of throwing Willis’ battered Everyman into complex capers engineered by sneering masterminds (which involve, yes, lots of explosions and property damage). If there was a Die Hard installment every other year, say, that premise wouldn’t work (although some would argue it doesn’t work anyway).

So it’s been a dozen years since the last time our grizzled hero found himself in a situation involving car chases, life-or-death battles and sinister criminal conspiracies. And it shows: This 21st-century John McClane is quieter, flintier and more grizzled than he was in the mid ’80s. He’s less quick with the wisecracks – and, honestly, less quick overall. As Danny Glover’s Roger Murtaugh might say, he’s getting too old for this shit.

Not that you can really tell. From the moment he breaks up a make-out session between his now college-age daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and an overzealous groper, McClane radiates an aura of fatigued badass – the joints are creakier, perhaps, but you still wouldn’t want to piss him off. And once he’s dispatched to escort a stereotypical young hacker named Matt Farrell (Justin Long, slightly less annoyingly smarmy than in those “Mac vs. PC” commercials), you’re hard-pressed to remember that this guy’s supposed to be a fifty-something average cop. No sooner does McClane show up at Farrell’s unrealistically spacious apartment than a team of assassins arrives to take him out, and achy joints or not, McClane’s discharging copious rounds and hustling through hails of gunfire with all the superhuman alacrity of an aging Arnold Schwarzenegger as he ferrets his geeky charge to safety.

McClane’s supposed to bring Farrell to the FBI, who are anxious to find out who’s responsible for a security breach at their Washington, D.C. headquarters. Turns out it’s a guy named Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Oliphant, exuding precious little of the menace he brought to HBO’s Deadwood), who quickly disables the nation’s infrastructure – including utilities and crashing the stock market – as part of an action known as a “fire sale” (“everything must go”). Gabriel wants to tie up all loose ends, which includes Farrell, who unknowingly played a small role. But he’s got John McClane keeping him safe, and together they start tracking down the bad guys.

Sticklers for accuracy as it relates to the Die Hard canon might carp that McClane’s “Somebody’s gotta stop these guys, might as well be us” attitude doesn’t quite jibe with the reluctant-hero archetype he’s embodied in the past. And it’s true that his motivation seems more plot-driven than character-derived, at least until Gabriel kidnaps Lucy for leverage (which, ideally, would have occurred much earlier – after all, it was McClane’s level of personal involvement that really sold the first two films).

Yeah, well, you know what? There are lots of ways in which Live Free is a Die Hard movie in name only. There’s McClane’s disingenuous “We’re heroes, this is what we do” speechifying. There’s the superheroic ease with which he launches a car into a helicopter, saves Farrell from a flying auto in the middle of a tunnel, handily defeats Gabriel’s girlfriend/henchman (Maggie Q), etc., etc. (He may be a somewhat reluctant superhero, but he’s a superhero nonetheless.) There’s the fact that Olyphant just doesn’t come close to the bar set by Alan Rickman, Jeremy Irons or even William Sadler or John Amos (Die Hard 2). And don’t even get me started on the frickin’ fighter jet – truly the franchise’s shark-jumping moment.

But ultimately, none of that matters. In spite of the obstacles it throws in its own path, Live Free or Die Hard simply exudes a comforting, “everything’s gonna be okay” feel, like a favorite blanket or a bucket of fried chicken. It’s formulaic, sure, but Willis is a reassuring presence as the weathered McClane, and the action sequences are, it must be said, pretty damn cool.

Sure, a Die Hard movie in the post-9/11 era would seem perfectly situated to tap into our new-millennial anxieties, an opportunity Live Free never quite seizes. But if you buy a ticket to the fourth movie in any action-film franchise expecting more than a couple hours’ worth of explosion-filled, car-crash spectacle, well, frankly, you’re wound a little too tight. Live Free or Die Hard is a fun, breezy entertainment, fueled largely by the nostalgic thrill of watching an old friend suit up in a familiar and beloved role. And there ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 5:25 pm and is filed under Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.