Stupid is as Stupid Dies

Rating: 6/10 (8 July 2007)

John McClane is, I assume, the poor man's answer to James Bond. Perhaps that is his appeal; the proverbial "Everyman" whose innate ability to survive gives him quasi-superhero status, a regular joe who somehow reveals remarkable brilliance and an indestructible nature whenever the need arises. He's Bond without the sophistication; Indiana Jones without the exotic nostalgia; Batman without the cape or the utility belt.
Yet, as such, he is a man of action and certainly not of personality. As personified by Bruce Willis in the DIE HARD films, McClane has remarkably little depth or charm. Willis swaggers through the films with his trademark smirk and a catalogue of mildly amusing one-liners, giving McClane what little color he has. As Willis returned to the character in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD, arguably the best of the series, the McClane character was described as Willis' signature role, which certainly sells the prolific actor short. But if the measure of an action hero is whether he would be just as interesting without the derring-do then I don't think McClane would past the test. McClane is only as interesting as the stunt team and CGI special effects allow him to be.
Willis himself is a much underrated and underappreicated actor. The right material and the right character shows him to be capable of giving performances of remarkable subtlety (THE SIXTH SENSE, NOBODY'S FOOL, UNBREAKABLE) as well as sharp comic skill (DEATH BECOMES HER). But when he allows himself to be pulled back into action hero roles (not just in the DIE HARD films, but in junk like ARMAGEDD0N and HUDSON HAWK), he runs the risk of following Burt Reynolds' path into shameless self-parody. That's not to say that Willis doesn't work hard in LIVE FREE, only that for all of his (and his stunt team's) strenuous running, jumping, fighting and shooting, he isn't given much opportunity to be anything more than Bruce Willis dying hard to get a paycheck.
LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD is, of course, a stupid movie. All the DIE HARD movies are just plain stupid: McClane stumbles into elaborate plots that don't make a lot of sense, inexplicably ends up in the center of the mayhem and shows unexpected skill as the only man who can possibly save the day. You know, all the things that we'd expect of James Bond, but not of a lowly police detective. Though the sinister plot at the center of LIVE FREE is an attempt to control America by taking over all the country's computers, hardly a plot that seems to promise much action; the comic book violence and high tech mayhem still manages to push the limit. McClane races all over the Eastern Seaboard as cars crash, buildings explode and various villains die more gruesomely than hard.
And there's not much else there; what little effort there's been to give McClane a personality and a life was used up in the first DIE HARD, with the subsequent films focusing on blowing things up real good. That seems to be all that the fans of these films really want, so why bother with anything else? His superhero credentials having been established, there isn't even much attempt to question why McClane repeatedly finds himself in such dire circumstances; it's just taken for granted.
But, it would have been nice had they attempted to shoehorn some semblance of a credible backstory into the film, something to act as a cushion between the special effects and non-stop action. We do meet his rebellious teenaged daughter, though as played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead she's a cipher, forgotten for most of the film until she needs daddy to save her at the end. More interest is shown in establishing a father figure relationship between McClane and a computer geek (nicely played by Justin Long) who gets sucked into being McClane's sidekick -- though I can't help but wonder why the filmmakers didn't make the computer geek character McClane's son (or for that matter his daughter) and thus give McClane some genuine motivation and emotional involvement, something real, in the otherwise far-fetched story.
As is, LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD is an adrenalin rush of elaborate, slickly executed, and not often believable, stunts. It's often funny, though I can't say it is all that much fun. It's just another day at work for a superhero.