An excellent summer popcorn flick

Rating: 8/10 (28 June 2007)

Admit it. When you first heard that they were making a Die Hard 4, you probably thought it was one of the worst ideas ever. I know it's what I thought. Live Free or Die Hard is, of course, not as good as the original (come on, you had to know a lot of Bruce Willis's talk was just hype) but it is the second best in the series, staying absolutely true to its roots and giving us a solid popcorn spectacle.
Justin Long is Matthew Farrell - a genius computer hacker who is the only one left alive after a criminal mastermind and his posse murder seven of his friends and then come after him. Assigned to escort him back to headquarters for questioning is John McClane, the same bad-a** mother****** we knew back in the old days. Kind of cocky, but self-assured and anti-authority like we like him. The action begins about ten minutes in and barely ever lets up from there. The storyline is a bit simple and preposterous, of course - a ring of American terrorists plan a digital Armageddon - but it's a perfect excuse for the spectacular action and believable enough that most people can accept it.
There are two things that sell this movie, and if either of them had sucked, it would have been complete crap. Bruce Willis and action. The best part about the action is that it is refreshingly devoid of CGI. It is hardcore, intense, and pulse-pounding. What you see is literally what you get. Bruce Willis jumping out of a car at 25 miles per hour? Actually happened. Smashing a car into a helicopter? Actually happened. However, the action is only the secondary star - the real power behind this film comes from the one and only Bruce. The film is dead in the water until the arrival of Bruce.
As everyman cop John McClane who forgot his shoes and went traipsing around on some broken glass in 1988, Willis resonated with the audience in his performance. He was not some superhero - his struggles were real, he made mistakes, and he got bloodied, broken, and bruised for it. One of the things I did not enjoy about this movie was how McClane was less of a real character and more of a legend - he's not such an everyman anymore. But even if the script doesn't make him out to be an everyman, Bruce Willis's performance could have fooled me. Nobody can spout out gallows humor one-liners like this guy. Every single one of his lines drew a huge laugh from the audience, and his carefree and fun attitude with everything only made him more endearing. This is a man who has been through hell and back - and it hasn't fazed him. The only reason he's less of an everyman is because we've known him for awhile, so he seems like something of a superhero. But it's not his fault he's lived through some pretty terrible crap. He is simply a man who loves his country and will do his absolute best to protect it - he just does what he needs to do, and why not have fun doing it? This is still John McClane, and Bruce Willis's performance is perfect.
All except three of the rest of the cast is forgettable. Justin Long as the hacker started out annoying, but he quickly became endearing and his great chemistry with Bruce Willis really helped the movie - you can tell that the actor was kind of intimidated by being in a movie with Bruce Willis, but it only helped his performance, because the character would have every reason to be scared of McClane. Timothy Olyphant as the villain was not bad, but he wasn't super amazing either. Alan Rickman, the villain in the first film, was absolutely wonderful and perfect in every way. He relished the role and made it more memorable than it might otherwise have been. For the first half of this movie, the villain is mostly boring and uninteresting, but when he begins to get more screen-time I sensed a genuinely villainous character that was being played with a lot of fun. Sometimes it bordered too close to the typical calm bad guy showing how evil he is because he's so calm, but overall it was a fairly impressive performance, and any performance can seem bad when it follows the incomparable Alan Rickman. The other notable cast member was only a cameo, but it was hilarious and perfect and I won't spoil it for you because the surprise upon seeing this person is half the fun.
Live Free or Die Hard may be the best popcorn flick this summer yet.It hearkens back to simply fun days of action cinema. Movies like Aliens, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or the original Die Hard, were hardcore, uncompromising movies, none of which had the handicap of CGI, but which still stand as some of the greatest action movies of all time. Live Free or Die Hard may not be among them as one of the greatest, but it is still an efficiently executed summer popcorn flick that knows exactly what it wants to deliver and succeeds in every possible way. It's a movie that'll have you shouting, "Yipee-kay-yay mother******!"