Live Free or Die Hard

Live Free or Die Hard reminds the audience of why Die Hard was a genre defining action film and a remarkable resilient franchise. It doesn’t try to hard to invent new plot devices it simply goes with a tried and true formula and puts together the pieces beautifully. More so than its predecessor Live Free or Die Hard understands that everything that is old is new again and that the Regan era excesses of action movies are once again cool and enjoyable.

Live Free or Die Hard also knows that its once core audience has grown up and changed its priorities. So has its star. John McClane is back but now he is 20 years older, if not wiser, divorced with grown children who he doesn’t get along with. But the makers of Die Hard know better than to mess with success, McClane is still the New York cop with a knack for resiliency and blowing things up. He may have grown older but he hasn’t grown up. McClane still reacts with glee every time he eliminates a bad guy be it with a fire extinguisher, or a car, or a gun.

Die Hard defined a genre of Die Hard on a (fill in the blank) but it has expanded beyond the geography of the Nakatomi Plaza. For each film the area McClane covers has grown. In the second he ranged an entire airport, in the third the city of New York. McClane’s exploits this time take him from Camden, New Jersey to Washington DC to West Virginia in a surprisingly short amount of time. The studio chose a rather new director in Len Wiseman whose major director credits include the two Underworld films, but Wiseman has a sure hand for action. It is likely that such an established franchise would have known if it was going off of the rails and would have replaced the director if things hadn’t been working out so ignore what hype there was and enjoy this director who seems to excel in placing cameras in positions in action sequences where they really shouldn’t be.

Live Free or Die hard comes across as what would have been a wonderful season of 24. Cyber-terrorists snarl traffic, bring government to a halt, crash the banking sector, and aim to take out all of the nation’s utilities. It is a much more photographable chaos than continually nerve gassing or detonating nuclear devices in urban areas. Plus the fallout from these things is less ghastly and lends itself more to storytelling than referencing fallout patterns. Of course now that a fire sale has been done 24 can’t pick it up to try to resurrect next season. The suspension of disbelief that the hero can navigate around large areas in cars and helicopters in brief periods of time without rest is also a carryover from 24. But Jack Bauer seems to be getting tired and his exploits not only defy the belief of the audience, but they aren’t that much fun anymore. McClane may have almost as much baggage as Bauer, but at least he seems to have some fun blowing up the bad guys. The audience enjoys it much more too.

The film does everything well and it seems less ranging and yet dragging than the last Die hard film. McClane gets a great sidekick in Justin Long whose cyber-geek Matt Farrell may have a clue as to what is going on far better than the government suits. The witty dialogue between the two makes for the most amusing parts of a very glib film. McClane still gets a number of putdowns and bravado scenes but his most famous line is drowned out by the film’s PG-13 rating. It is surprising that the level of violence between the first film and this one are virtually the same which shows the increasing leniency of violence in the ratings system in the intervening decades. Though there has been outrage that this franchise should sire a PG-13 child it is no doubt that once the DVD is ready there will be additional footage to boost the film back into the R category and make the naysayers happy. From a marketing perspective of course PG-13 is the golden egg of summer blockbusters and nearly guarantees that Live Free or Die Hard will be the highest grossing film of the franchise.

Live Free or Die Hard does a good job adding a supporting cast that doesn’t annoy or take away from John McClane’s screen time. Of course there is no villain who takes as much gleeful fun in creating chaos as Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber. But at least the directors know not to try to rekindle the magic by making a Gruber-lite. Timothy Olyphant plays Thomas Gabriel as a humorless cyber-terrorist who is, of course, out for the money. He gets the requisite sidekicks in a martial artist girlfriend played by Maggie Q and a few surprisingly agile and acrobatic henchmen who makes for some interesting scenes bouncing around streets and industrial complexes.

Even McClane’s college age daughter is played defiantly but not irritatingly by Mary Elizabeth Winstead seen previously in Tarantino’s Death Proof portion of Grindhouse. Often the role becomes a, to cite 24 again, Kim role of an annoying damsel in distress who continually needs to get bailed out by the more capable people around her. Lucy McClane may get abducted and wait for her dad to come save her, but she isn’t beyond trying to escape or at least give her captors at least as much trouble as she can. It is more reminiscent of Eliza Dushku’s role as Schwarzenegger’s daughter in True Lies.

Of course the most interesting supporting casting is one of the smallest yet most fun and satisfying roles in the film. Director Kevin Smith appears as The Warlock, a shadowy cyber-mentor to Farrell. In true nerd fashion Smith is an arrogant and paranoid computer hacker who of course operates his cyber-snooping from his lair in his mother’s basement. Already the character has gained notoriety and newer films, like Transformers, have been compared as having a Warlock-like character.

Live Free and Die Hard is a perfect summer film. It is fast paced and fun, it is funny, and it is at times an exercise in ridiculously over the top action. The casting is perfect and the oddball friendship between McClane and Farrell adds significant fun to the proceedings. Bruce Willis shows that there is still a lot of gas in John McClane’s tank and a lot of imminently quotable one liners left to amuse. If only the rest of the highly expected big budget blockbusters were this satisfying.