LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD

I am SO glad we watched all three Die Hard movies before this. First, to remember how frickin’ amazing the original is, and second so that I could accurately assess how disappointing Live Free or Die Hard is…or is not?

Prior to its release, a lotta people talked about all the things that clearly pointed to Live Free or Die Hard “ruining” the Die Hard franchise…giving him a lame geeky sidekick, the PG-13, a bald John McClane, a storyline based around computers*…all this and many more have been considered, but you know what? This franchise was ruined from the moment Die Hard 2: Die Harder (and what a retarded title that is, by the way) hit the screens. So pretty much as soon as it became a franchise, BAM, ruined. Gone. That said, Die Hard With A Vengeance is off the frickin’ chain. You don’t enjoy it, you can just take a big lick right now. It’s not as good as the first, but it’s pretty damn great.

What did Live Free or Die Hard get right? Awesome action scenes. Really. Len Wiseman’s only previous directing credits are on the Underworld franchise, which I’ve never seen and never will (but I know a guy in college who, in the days following the release of Underworld: Evolution, swore it was the best film he’d ever seen…film school is a sad, sad place), but the man has an eye for movement. Second, McClane’s still cool. Whatever. He always will be. Third, the plot’s actually pretty sweet, even if the execution is less than thrilling. Fourth, they made sure it all happened in one day. That to me is KEY for a Die Hard movie, and they stayed with it.

Unfortunately, cool plot, awesome action, and a great main character a good action film do not make. Because the bad guys just suck. They’re awful. There’s nothing interesting or compelling about them, and they did that retarded thing they’ve been doing…I’d say since around the time X-Men came out, where everyone suddenly decided action movie villains need to be sympathetic and have motivation beyond money and just being evil. Screw that. For all its faults, Transformers still had just an evil guy (robot) to fight against. Mission: Impossible III was great for many reasons, one of which Phillip Seymour Hoffman was just flat-out evil. No reason, no motivation…he just hated you for being you. And so did every Die Hard villain…until this jackass, who couldn’t even be bothered with a personality while he’s trying to destroy the country (or show the country how it could be destroyed or whatever his lame plan was). Just makes me angry.

Second, Justin Long isn’t funny. Ever. Not just in this movie. Ever (yes, even the damn Mac ads). I get his appeal, he’s kind of a cool hipster guy, and maybe it’s just because I dislike hipsters, but I just have a disproportionate loathing for that guy for like no real reason. And this movie wasn’t changing that very fast. I think it’s just because he’s always kinda this likeable loser hipster guy, but beyond that has no real distinguishing personality, and people put him in movies because he fills space a lot more effectively than most other actors. Could be. He wasn’t nearly as bad as the damn sidekick in Die Hard 2 though. Man, you wanna talk about the most boring supporting character ever put in a major action movie.

Next, yes, the PG-13 sucks. There’s some pretty great violence in this movie (and a lot of it happens to that guy who’s always climbing and jumping, but he lives through an unusual amount of it), but it looks like it’s happening to like mannequins or something, I don’t even know. That monkey guy gets taken down pretty spectacularly, actually, but, y’know…no real blood. And I know this says a lot about me as a person that I really crave my violence bloody, but y’know, unless you’re doing a lot of kung-fu (and even then), blood’s kinda part of the game. Especially with the shooting and so forth. And especially in a movie called DIE HARD. HARD. DIE.

Oh, and Kevin Smith isn’t outright bad so much as he…it’s like when you’re watching the trailer for that new Hairspray musical thing, and the credits tell you John Travolta’s the fat woman. And you ask yourself…why? Why would they cast John Travolta? Why not cast a woman? It’s kinda the same thing with Kevin Smith in Live Free or Die Hard. They clearly put him in here because he’s kinda known as a cool geeky guy, but it’s just really distracting and doesn’t serve the story (or the lameass character he’s playing) or any other purpose other than an attempt to gain geek points, which they lost immediately because movie fans are much smarter than studios give them credit for when it comes to spotting such things (although we’ll always end up paying for it, so I guess we’re not as smart as we think).

Anyway, don’t see this movie. Bye.

*Here’s another thing I didn’t know until the movie started – four distinct screenwriting credits. Sometimes that works out well (Children of Men), other times not so much. It breaks down like such…Mark Bomback wrote the screenplay, but the story was by him and a guy named David Marconi, although some amount of the story was based on an article called “A Farewell to Arms” by John Carlin. Oh, and Roderick Thorp, author of Nothing Lasts Forever, the book on which the original Die Hard is based, gets credit for “certain original characters.” Fan-tastic.

P.S. I was just now surfing through the Rotten Tomatoes reviews, and for literally the first time ever I am actually wondering if I even saw the same damn movie. Maybe I didn't. Maybe it was all just a bad dream. That happens sometimes. I've dreamt of seeing Batman Begins, Superman Returns, and Transformers at least before they came out. In dream form, they all blew hard.