proof that action-movie overload can be a good thing

Rating: 7/10 (30 June 2007)

After a twelve-year-long hiatus in which he was off doing other things, Bruce Willis finally returns to his signature role of NYPD detective John McClane in "Live Free or Die Hard," a pulse-pounding action film guaranteed to confirm every paranoid suspicion you've ever had that humans are indeed at the mercy of technology.
In this installment, McClane has gone far beyond rescuing people trapped in a burning building; he's moved into saving-the-world territory as he takes on a disgruntled security expert who, after his warnings about massive system failure are ignored by the United States government, devises a plan to bring society to its knees through a mind-boggling display of techno terrorism.
Director Len Wiseman doesn't fool around when it comes to giving the action audience what it's paid good money to see; from the very first scene, he shifts into full-throttle mode and never once lets up throughout the course of the movie. In fact, so skillful is he at staging the elaborate action scenes that one barely notices that a mere human being like McClane winds up withstanding a tougher pounding than any genuine super-powered superhero ever have had to put up with even on his worst day. Indeed, McClane engineers so many hairbreadth escapes and arises unscathed from so many predicaments that would have killed a lesser man ten times over that we begin to think he should be given a comic book of his own for all his efforts.
Clearly, credibility is never a very high priority for any action movie, and "Live Free or Die Hard" compensates for its weakness in that area by being fast-paced, seamlessly stitched together and surprisingly good-natured despite the rather alarming body count it manages to pile up in time for the closing credits. Nobody embodies the sardonic, wisecracking, stoic hero better than Willis, and even in his early 50's, he displays an agility and athleticism that would turn many younger action stars green with envy. Willis receives fine support from Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Cliff Curtis and the beautiful Maggie Q. Although easily nine-tenths of the movie is straight-on action, writer Mark Bomback still manages to sprinkle in the requisite one-liners all such protagonists need if they are to be taken seriously as action figures, and he has fun with the irony that the bad guys with all their cybernetic gizmos and technological thingamabobs are no match for McClane's good old-fashioned ingenuity and brainpower.
What would the world do without John McClane?