it's not horrible to see it once, but it won't have much of a place in my DVD collection

Rating: 5/10 (2 July 2007)

Live Free or Die Hard will attract, and has already attracted, masses of fans of the Die Hard franchise or simply the 07 summer blockbuster crowd, looking for big huge explosions and John McClaine (Bruce Willis) as the cynical New York detective out to kill a lot of people (and there are a LOT of people this time around, by hook or by crook or car smashing into helicopter) in his mission to do whatever it is the screenwriters get him to do. Which is fine. But personally, the movie comes off like a bag of Doritos or a McDonalds burger that has 'New and Improved' in big letters on the outer box, but the contents are stale and left out in the open air for much too long. It's not necessarily "good" for you to start with, but it should be something to make you feel good in the sense of more primal thrills. Yet I call shenanigans on this one this time. Like Superman Returns or particularly Terminator 3, the studios via the writers are left to their own devices to think up a gimmick or situation, not so much any kind of story, to pluck their big headliner hero into, and the idea is that whatever this is the audience will be fine with it as long as they get the basics of what's expected.
It's not that the fourth Die Hard installment doesn't try and go for big action. On the contrary, it's got more heavy-duty action than at least the last two Die Hard installments, and probably just as much as the first. But there's a catch- actually a double catch- in the movie this time. Instead of the real work being put into the script and casting and THEN the big action set pieces and violent fights, it's the other way around, and there's a sinking sensation even from the first few minutes that this will be all too formulaic. To give some credit where it's due, it's like looking at a used Jeep that's been re-assembled a couple of times: you'll get around in it, but it's not the most enjoyable of rides. The "new" ingredient mentioned before comes in the form of the threat this time being a high-tech scheme/plot to overthrow America by way of overriding the already over dominant presence of technology itself. The ideas behind this, of governmental control, of the abstract power of computers, are only thrown in of course as stuff to set up the picture, but there's more potential here than is really tapped- and it's potential that is already fishy by already seeming to be there as a device unto itself, no pun intended, as opposed to actually leading to other things in the movie (ala in Die Hard 3 the ideas of racism, the "other" and so on).
The only thread that continues through all the films, and maybe to a more successfully ridiculous degree this time, is money. This time the big-time ex-White House terrorist played by the practically straight-faced villain Olyphant is after billions and billions, or maybe just wiping out the system altogether. But unlike in at least the first and third installments (I haven't seen the second one in a while), it's left goofily as just a sidebar to lead up to an uber-conventional climax in an airplane hanger with the key players. Really though, even if this weren't necessarily a Die Hard movie, and it still had all the same plot elements, it would still feel re-cooked: the father over-protective of the daughter not seen again until needed for the plot; the obnoxious sidekick- here so obnoxious it hurts even in supposedly funny scenes from Justin Long; the sassy female 2nd banana to Olyphant played by Maggie Q, who is almost a ninja cyborg as opposed to a human being; the 'man in charge' at the government agency two steps behind the protagonist and antagonist; and, disappointing considering it's Kevin Smith, the oafish secret guy who pushes the plot just a little more along.
I'm not opposed to big mega-buck franchises pumping out another feature from a series I've admired for a while, and I'm sure if there are others in the future (matter of fact Indiana Jones 4 comes out next summer), I'll likely be there again to plunk down a few bucks and see what comes up. But with Live Free or Die Hard, as stupidly watchable as it can be in its big-bang action sequences, it's like a watered down treatment of a blockbuster for a series that should be the toughest around. When I was younger it was a lot of wicked fun seeing a high-octane movie like Die Hard with a Vengeance (still my favorite of the lot) with Samuel L. Jackson doing as much cursing as he did in Pulp Fiction. In this installment, the "F" bomb, considered a big no-no for the MPAA, is actually dubbed over (in lieu of a PG-13 rating) if uttered once or twice- with the perennial catch phrase cut off by a gun-shot- albeit still allowing for more "S" words than a sailor on sabbatical and enough ultra-violent moments to make probably the original director of Die Hard wince. It's a double standard, which is bad enough, but heaped on with a predictable plot that runs its course before the movie ends it leads to almost a kind of indifference. In one word, it's "Eh" movie-making.