The thing I love about the Die Hard films is their complete lack of pretentiousness. They are big, dumb, stupid action films, but they know perfectly well that they're big, dumb, stupid action films and don't pretend to be anything else. No heavy-handed moralising or social commentary, no token attempts to be "deep", no multi-layered political plot filled with challenging twists. McClane is the Good Guy, his opponents are Bad Guys, Good Guy fights Bad Guys, Good Guy wins. Sure, it's cliched and predictable, but so what? It's great fun. And in the post-9/11 world, where every Hollywood action/thriller is full of "Are we really the bad guys?" navel gazing, the black-and-white morality of 'Live Free Or Die Hard' is actualy quite refreshing.
The plot is perhaps the one token attempt to be modern, involving cyber-hackers shutting down essentail infrastructure systems across the East Coast, bringing the US to a stand-still. But from here, you know exactly how this works. While the FBI and other experts just stand around frowning and looking worried, McClane dispatches the army of baddies almost single handedly, all the while coming up with a smart wisecrack to nail every moment. It is an older and more world-weary McClane in this installment, which of course just allows more room for jokes about his age, hair, fitness, and lack of technological nous.
This movie is unashamedly stupid. Turn off everything even remotely resembling a brain cell before watching this, and please don't bother trying to understand how McClane can survive 100 metre falls, car pile-ups, massive explosions, and hundreds of bullets. And as for why the baddies fire everything from a machine-gun to a missile at McClane without causing a scratch, while McClane can let off two bullets from a pistol and hit them between the eyes.....you know better than to ask that, don't you?
By now, Bruce Willis can play McClane in his sleep, and there are some surprisingly strong supporting roles. Justin Tong nails it as the nervy hacker Farrell, and I also loved Mary Elizabeth Winstead as McClane's daughter Lucy (who shares the same no-nonsense attributes as her father). Cliff Curtis gives Bowman unexpected intelligence and depth as the capable-but-hamstrung FBI head Bowman, and I wish there'd been more of Maggie Q as the very cool Mai, since Timothy Olyphant wasn't that menacing as the main villain.
You know exacly what you're going to get from a Die Hard movie, and the fourth installment delivers everything you want in spades. Brainless popcorn stupidity was never so much fun.Get more detail about Live Free or Die Hard (Unrated).
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