“Live Free or Die Hard”
(2 BOMBS) WILL REQUIRE THERAPY AFTER VIEWING
For those who don’t remember, the original “Die Hard” ended with a bad anti-climax.
John McClane (Bruce Willis) wraps a chain around the neck of killer Karl (Alexander Godunov) and hoists him into the air like a flag. Yep, he’s dead. Wait, he’s faking it. Karl comes alive at a rather inopportune time and is immediately shot.
It’s a ridiculous moment.
Karl clearly didn’t know when to quit. Same can be said of the “Die Hard” series. Does anyone in Hollywood know when to stop? I’d say not.
“Live Free or Die Hard,” the fourth film of the franchise, also doesn’t know the destructive power of excess.
Director Len Wiseman (“Underworld”) ramps up the action until the audience begins to wonder when dinosaurs will emerge to stomp on McClane. There’s literally nowhere else for the director to go on his “insane situations for John McClane to escape” list.
Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) attempts to bring down virtually every computer system in the U.S. It’s what’s known in hacker slang as a “fire sale.” When Gabriel begins by shutting down most infrastructure computers, including the FBI and the transportation systems, McClane is assigned to recover Matt Farrell (Justin Long), a computer hacker who may be a suspect. Turns out he’s not a suspect, but a target of Gabriel’s assassins.
Naturally, and despite all odds, McClane systematically thwarts every assassination attempt.
Beginning with McClane’s escape of several machine-gun toting bad guys, Wiseman tries to one-up each successive scene. Thus, when McClane manages to jump a police car off a barrier into a helicopter, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to go. Yet we’re then treated to a harrowing bit of theater involving an SUV hanging in an elevator shaft and the film’s “Karl” moment — McClane jumping out of a semi-truck and onto the back of a fighter jet.
It also was particularly amusing to watch Gabriel try to kill McClane and Farrell by rerouting natural gas into a power plant, thereby causing a massive explosion. Not that I doubt the explosive power of natural gas, but I’m pretty sure that something needs to ignite it. I guess since Gabriel reroutes traffic and cars crash and explode, natural gas magically will do the same thing.
If my theory is correct, nobody associated with this film will realize that “Die Hard 5” is a bad idea. Maybe that means that McClane will be leaping from airliner to airliner or killing bad guys with the power of his spit.
Neither will be worth watching.
Better than: “Die Hard: With a Vengeance”
Worse than: “Die Hard”
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mrcranky.com
