Live Free or Die Hard

Live Free or Die Hard (Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Cliff Curtis) – Let me start by saying I really liked this movie.  It kept me interested for all two hours, had fantastic stunts (real and CG), and was true to the Die Hard tongue-in-cheek, persevere-against-all odds, yippee-ki-yay series.  That said, it feels more like a James Bond film with a hint of the Mission Impossible graphic treatment.  In that sense, it takes the Die Hard series to a different, but not necessarily better, level.  It’s a sad commentary on today’s audiences or today’s Hollywood attitude that films have to have stunt after stunt after computer graphic after graphic violence to attract an audience.  The story is familiar.  This time, NYPD Senior Detective John McClane (Willis) is going to save the whole darn country.  It’s been 11 years since we’ve seen McClane, now divorced from his wife (played then by Bonnie Bedelia) and estranged from his daughter, Lucy (played here by Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Someone hacked into the FBI’s computer system (and a whole lot more), and McClane is assigned to pick up super hacker Matt Farrell in Camden. He’s played by Justin Long, who you will know best from those famous Apple vs. PC commercial series (he’s the MAC guy).  The bad guys kill all the hackers except Farrell, thanks to McClane.  The rest is pure action with lots of completely impossible happenings; severe continuity and timing problems; and weapons that kill bad guys, appliances, helicopters and power stations but not Willis or Long.   But who cares? Forget logic, suspend disbelief, and go with the flow in a really good action movie with blood, humor, and one-dimensional good and bad guys.