>>REVIEW
Live Free or Die Hard
STARRING: Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Maggie Q DIRECTED BY: Len Wiseman NOW PLAYING, CHECK LISTINGS
The question that everybody is dying to know the answer to: does Live Free or Die Hard work as a PG flick, the first of the series, or is it too tame without the John McClane R-rated F-bombs?
The answer is that it totally works, because director Len Wiseman has made a slick action movie in which style and creativity more than compensate for the lack of explicit violence and cursing. However, the film’s rating appears to have been decided upon after shooting had begun. Some scenes are obviously and horribly re-dubbed. This minor issue aside, the fourth installment in the series gives audiences another great time with their favorite wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time cop.
This time McClane (Bruce Willis) is up against techno-terrorists who threaten the country by attacking everything that keeps America’s technologically bound society running smoothly. Willis’s most popular role is one that audiences still love to watch him in no matter what he’s doing. The who’s, what’s and why’s almost don’t matter as long as he’s shooting people, wrecking stuff and talking to himself. Joining him is Matt Farrell (Justin Long), a brilliant hacker who just might be able to help stop the baddies from hitting delete on the American way and to banter with the grizzled McClane while the bullets fly and the action gets outrageous. And the filmmakers have put serious effort into making sure it does get crazy with cars hitting helicopters, fighter jets shooting up freeways and many, many kicks and punches that will elicit sympathetic groans of pain from the audience.
Timothy Olyphant and Maggie Q play the movie’s villains and do a decent job making what they can of their characters. However, they still come off simplistic and flat. Even though it’s been 19 years since Alan Rickman took over the Nakatomi building, it’s tough to come up with a bad guy as great as Hans Gruber.
It’s Bruce. It’s guns. It’s Die Hard. It’s the reason that people go to the movies in the summer. |
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