What’s happened to the contemporary concept of the hero? In movies, our heroes used to be solitary, larger than life gunslingers like John Wayne, both bulletproof and impossibly noble. At present, gone is the boy scout optimism of Luke Skywalker. In the current cultural landscape, heroism comes with a hefty set of matching issues. Great power doesn’t just bring responsibility; it also brings a deep pool of angst. Spider-Man will never be happy. Last year’s Superman was creepily love-lorn. The ultimate icon of the modern hero might be 24‘s Jack Bauer. He’s bulletproof, but his nobility and patriotism spring from his pain and emotional suffering.
John McClane is the cinematic equivalent to Jack Bauer; A pain magnet who volunteers for massive amounts of physical suffering because he can’t weave emotion into his life any other way. At the start of every installment of Die Hard, McClane (Bruce Willis) is divorced from his wife and estranged from his children. By the end of every installment, he gets rewarded with a moment of familial reconciliation, a brief respite for enduring inhuman amounts of pain and a staggering loss of life.
What keeps it watchable – because this is a film that is never going to make a lick of sense – is Bruce Willis’s trademark smirk. His McClane is a man who is only truly alive when the entire world is gunning for him, literally. The perverse paradox of the Die Hard movies is that his character is only happy when it’s raining bullets. In peaceable times, McClane is probably an insufferable asshole, but when the bombs start going off, he doesn’t enjoy the suffering, he lives for it. The congratulatory hug from his daughter is almost a disappointment, a cold splash of water that reminds him that hero time is over.
Another summer blockbuster, Spider-Man 3, foundered with an over-attention to detail. This newest entry into the Die Hard series – Live Free Or Die Hard – merrily dispenses with subtlety and nuance as soon as the assault rifles start firing. The opening credits claim the film is based on a 10 year old article from Wired magazine called “A Farewell To Arms”, about the future potential for cyber-terrorism. Exactly what the filmmakers appropriated from the article is a mystery. There don’t seem to be any passages in it about manipulating presidential speeches into a Letterman-worthy video ransom note, nor any inklings that hacking the stock market will result in a fist fight in an SUV lodged in an elevator shaft.
Previously, McClane found himself battling well-armed bad guys in a high rise, an airport, and New York City. Now the action sprawls across the Eastern seaboard, as the acerbic McClane is drawn into a battle against cyber-terrorists who are systematically shutting down every electronic network in America. That’s a great concept, and maybe someday a great movie will be made about it. However, that’s not this movie. This is a movie where Bruce Willis runs out of bullets, so he gets to shoot down a helicopter by launching a car at it.
That’s the kind of free-wheeling fun that makes Live Free Or Die Hard a terrifically watchable action movie. What passes for a plot is just tinsel draped around a frenetic scramble to blow some cool shit apart. The action sequences escalate manically, veering into the sublimely ridiculous, like a Tex Avery cartoon. Unable to rain down anvils from the sky, the writers and director substitute bodies, missiles, cars, trucks, and fighter jets with a reckless abandon. It’s practically a human cartoon, but unlike Wile E. Coyote, John McClane’s joy in the agony delivers a campy sense of fun.
On a technical note, there appears to have been substantial re-writing in post-production. Eagle-eyed (and -eared) viewers will spot a number of wide shots and reverse angles that cover mouthy chunks of exposition. Watch for it in a lot of the wide shots, where Justin Long’s hacker character has to spew out some critical information to move the story along. If re-writing in post-production couldn’t patch up the plot holes, one can only imagine what the original script couldn’t explain.
Also, Sung Kang, who was so memorably cool in The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift appears here in a sub-one dimensional role as a walking ponytail spouting obvious, almost needless exposition. Congrats to Mr. Kang for getting the big studio pic paycheck and a spot in the opening credits, and shame on the studio and producers for wasting talent.
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