I watch a lot of movies. I admit a bias to action films that came out in my formative years. Commando may be one of the worst movies every filmed but I have seen it 300 times and love it more than stuffed crust pizza. So when I heard a 4th Die Hard episode was in the works, I will confess I decided to love it before the first teaser trailer popped up on aintitcool.com. How can you not love John McClane? He's the only action hero that seems to take a larger beating than the thugs and hechmen he is dispatching but continues struggling to his feet. I also respect a hero that pops pills, slams booze and talks shit to a much larger man as he is beating him with a chain. The only thing (well two things) that gave me pause were A) it's pg-13 and B) its directed by the same zilch that did Underworld, which stinks on ice.
The first was the primary concern because one of my favorite things on earth is hearing Bruce Willis use "fuck" as a adverb to describe "fucking" or as an adjective to describe a "dumb fuck." The second worried me because the second Underworld is the worst scrap of sci-fi drivel I have ever laid eyes upon and Ive seen "John Carpenters: Vampires." To a lessor degree the fact that the first and third installments in the Die Hard saga were two of the finest action films in history in my humble estimation. I thought that Sam Jackson and Willis out did Riggs and Murtoch in one try and didn't think that Justin Long could pull off a McClane sidekick. I was very surprised and pleased to be proved wrong.
To start with, the movie is way over the top, that much is a given. But I will never understand how critics use that against a summer action film. If it was "believable" the first time one of the bad guys opened up on John with a machine gun, he would most likely catch one on the gut and roll credits. That being said, there are some fantastic action sequences throughout this flick, but there is no wire-fu. Willis doesn't run up any walls. At no point does he perform actions that you don't believe a human being would be able to get away with. There is one sequence where he runs over a 90 pound Asian woman with an SUV and she survives, but its only to set the table for her truly fantastic death sequence. The film really delivers.
Back to Justin Long. He is very funny and understated. He doesn't fall into the lame sidekick trap of talking a bunch of shit to the protagonist even has the sidekick's life is being saved. Long is in awe of McClane for most of the movie. He is intimidated by his heroism and grateful for his prowess as a cop. His is the modern, computer hacker ying to McClane's brawler, old school relic cop's yang. The pairing works very well. I would have liked to see more references to the previous 3 films. At no time does Nagatomi Plaza get mentioned or do the Gruber Brothers rear their dreamy European heads. This movie seems very autonomous from the first 3. While I have no problem forgetting the second Die Hard, why not reference the other two?
That being said this is a fun movie that knows what it is and doesn't try to be more. Some summer films (Spiderman 3) try to do too much, this one just tries to kick ass and wins. All the negative things I have read about seem to be from stuffed shirt independent film Nazis that wouldn't know a good time if it bit them on their ass. It's nice to see a film that is thoughtful and plodding ever once in a while, but most of the time I would prefer to have fun at the theater. Live Free or Die Hard provides that to it's viewers and I wish Sam Rami and Brian Singer would take a few notes.
