Die Hard: Generations

Rating: 6/10 (12 July 2007)

Being a die-hard fan of the "Die Hard" series for as long as I can remember, watching the first installment in 12 years is by turns exhilarating and jarring: "Live Free or Die Hard" shows just how much the process of cinematic action has changed in such a relatively short period. Whereas we once had stunt-men and creative blocking/editing to successfully deliver the illusion that, yes, that IS Bruce Willis unloading a can of whoop-ass on Alan Rickman's, William Sadler's, and Jeremy Irons' henchmen, we now have technology to deliver increasingly improbable action (not that the action in the previous films was ever very probable) with our bruised, now-bald rock of a hero, John McClane, in the foreground. While this makes the action-sequence ceiling seem limitless, it makes much of "Live Free"'s stunts and set-pieces veer into ridiculousness.
And, of course, that is one of the reasons we pay the over-inflated ticket price to watch Bruce do his thing--we know most of the stunts and set-pieces are anything but humanly possible, but we are riveted to the appeal of Willis's Everyman dynamic. In "Live Free," our undeterred hero butts heads with Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant--"Go"), a former government worker feeling burned for having his techno-savvy Homeland Security protection program rejected (or something to that effect--does it really matter?); with the ultimate goal of locking down all of America's technology, these Caucasian terrorists (with a female Asian martial-arts expert, and--curiously--French assassins) incite a "fire sale" that only Willis and techno-geek Matt Farrell (Mac pitchman Justin Long) can stop. As McClane becomes his usual one-man force, Gabriel raises the stakes by kidnapping his daughter, Lucy ("Death Proof" hottie Mary Elizabeth Winstead). The road to the conclusion of this 130-minute monster is paved in carnage, all of which Gabriel claims "can be fixed" ("On the back of the taxpayer, right?" I mused to myself).
Director Len Wiseman, who cut his teeth on the style-heavy "Underworld" films, seems a rather natural choice for this type of material, which puts action over plot. But his direction is almost too slick for its own good--part of me embraced the uses of CG technology to make the action more urgent and polished, but my inner series purist felt betrayed by a convention that is, quite frankly, overused in cinema today. To "Live Free"'s credit, most of its uses are seamlessly integrated, but when a Harrier Jet is chasing McClane around a winding, elevated highway at the film's climax, the temptation to laugh almost overrides the equally strong urge to gasp. The scene works, but is closer in tone and appearance to Michael Bay than John McTiernan.
Which is why I suppose I titled my review "Die Hard: Generations." "Live Free" shows Bruce Willis at the end of his franchise credibility, and while he has plenty of "yippie-ki-yay" to see him through this entry, the inclusion of Justin Long's ferret-y hacker seems like an attempt to bring in a younger audience. Ditto the use of computers as harbingers of destruction--while taking a less-than-subtle jab at how our lives have been overrun by technology, Long's savvy is more a point of interest for kids weaned on iTunes and pirated programs (whatever happened to the good old days, where terrorists took control of high-rises before the advent wireless networks?). And another dubious nod toward making "Live Free" palatable to (and viewable by) a younger audience is its PG-13 rating; while the carnage is pretty substantial, it seems as though the filmmakers held back very little in the way of wholesale death--the axiom being, "you can kill as many generic henchmen as possible in quick edits with no (or little) blood and beat a woman as long as she's an Asian martial-arts expert and get a PG-13, but with more gore and one extra F-bomb, you'd be in R territory." While the film sated my summer action fix, I wonder why a film that already pushes the barrier of the PG-13 didn't simply venture into R territory anyway (after all, part of the appeal of watching the original trilogy at an impressionable age is seeing stuff we're not "supposed" to see).
The villains of "Die Hard" have always been part of the key to the series' success, sophisticated yet flawed foils to Willis's distinctly "mom and apple pie" hero. Thespians like Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons had fun playing against type as criminal masterminds of ill intent (but no ill humor), and held their own against the unflappable McClane. Olyphant, by comparison, comes off a bit bland--potentially another 'touch' for the detached generation weaned on Michael Bay; cold and smartly calculating, Thomas Gabriel epitomizes "The Man"--the soulless computer geek (with a better wardrobe and haircut than his more transparently dorky accomplices) whose Bill Gates-ian demeanor naturally breeds contempt. By the time McClane confronts this terrorist threat, the effect doesn't come off as spectacularly as it has in the past (though the Harrier chase that comes right before is a hard sequence to top).
While I have leveled a lot of seeming criticisms against "Live Free or Die Hard," I still recommend the film on the basis of its sole purpose: as pure entertainment to pass a lazy summer afternoon. Willis is as tough and appealing as ever, and Long makes a good counterpoint to his grizzled veteran. While not on the same level of the previous films, which valued substance on a level above the superficial (watch the scenes between Reginald VelJohnson and Willis in the original, or those with Samuel L. Jackson in the third to see what I mean) it is certainly worth a look.