Thursday, June 28, 2007 , Updated
Movie review: Live Free or Die Hard
Maggie Q in skin-tight FBI leathers? Oh, yes...
Adrenaline-pumping, testosterone-laden summer blockbuster action fare, anyone? Submitted for your approval: Live Free or Die Hard, the 4th installment in the long-dormant Bruce Willis (as John McClane) supercop saga.
Live Free or Die Hard
On the Fourth of July weekend, an attack on the vulnerable United States infrastructure begins to shut down the entire nation. The mysterious figure behind the scheme has figured out every modern angleĀ but he never figured on McClane--the old-school "analog" fly in the "digital" ointment. It's the beginning of the holiday, but New York City Detective McClane isn't celebrating. He's had yet another argument with his college-age daughter Lucy, and received a crushingly routine assignment to bring in a young hacker, Matt Farrell, for questioning by the FBI. But for McClane, the ordinary has a habit of exploding into the extraordinary--abruptly hurtling him into the wrong place at the wrong time. With Farrell's help, McClane slowly begins to understand the increasing chaos surrounding him. An attack is underway on the vulnerable United States infrastructure, shutting down the entire nation. The mysterious figure behind the scheme, Thomas Gabriel, stays several moves ahead of McClane as he implements his incredible plans, known to uber-geeks like Farrell as a "fire sale" (as in, everything must go!)
Source: Cinema Source
No 'bouta doubt it, this 130-minute shoot-em-up is the genuine article: it's blunt force trauma vs. high-tech networking cyber-hooliganism as Detective John McClane and reluctant code-wrangler sidekick Matt Farrell (Justin Long) match wits (and fists and guns and cars and planes... and even babes) with evil genius Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant, looking nothing at all like his character in Deadwood) and his hench-geeks in a battle to control everything on the planet hooked up to a computer. Which turns out to be pretty much everything on the planet.
I imagine the bidding was intense for the 9mm concession on this set: there are so many brass casings flying through the air that at times it's hard to see the people pulling the various triggers. And reloading, lots of reloading: McClane has apparently fallen into the habit of carrying a belt full of ancillary clips for his double-stack auto pistol - just in case he encounters, say, a hit squad of buzz-gun wielding French bad hommes. Which he does, in the very first reel.
They (the bad hommes) are out to perforate Farrell, because he's contracted to deliver a code-manipulating Maguffin-worthy algorithm to the sinister forces of Thomas Gabriel - although he's only ever been in contact with the sexy vocal presence of Gabriel's right-hand person, Mai Lihn (Maggie Q); as far as Farrell knows, he's actually been doing off-the-books security work for some shady government organization or other. When McClane shows up at his door to bring him in for questioning by the FBI (who are trying to figure out who's been messing in a catastrophic way with the nation's transportation infrastructure), Farrell thinks the worst thing that can happen to him is that McClane will rip the arm off another of his collectible Transformer action figures. Then the bullets start to fly.
From this point forward the viewer should psych up for one smash-up car chase and full-auto gun battle after another, with only brief interludes of pesky plot exposition or character-driven soliloquy, such as the rather sappy monologue delivered by McClane about halfway into the piece about how it's a lonely and thankless gig being a no-holds-barred bringer-down of bad hommes: all that violence and time away from the dinner table tends to alienate one's wife and daughter, who simply can't appreciate that the world needs saving every dozen years or so. (Ungrateful civilians.)
Farrell and Mai Lihn: "A little lower. Yeah, that's it... JUST like that!"
Director Len Wiseman has helmed only two films (Underworld and Underworld: Evolution) prior to this one, and they've both starred Kate Beckinsale; I'm betting he missed Kate (to whom he is currently married) and her vampire-defeating spin kicks on this set, but he consoled himself with the security guard-defeating spin-kicks of Maggie Q, who spin kicks probably better than Kate ever dreamt about spin kicking. (On the off-chance that she'd ever actually dream about spin kicking, as opposed to dreaming about ditching the role of Selene, the vampire spin-kicker of the Underworld mythos, green-lit for its third outing in 2009.)
Dang, how'd I get off on this whole Kate Beckinsale tangent? Must be the legs.
Back to that new Die Hard movie: Wiseman does an outstanding job of translating the outlandish McClane action deeds from storyboard to screen. You've seen the trailer in which McClane takes out a (flying) helicopter with a car; that's nothing compared to the little drama involving the sport-ute in the elevator shaft. (O.K., so the F-22 Raptor crash scenario blows believability to shreds, but two out of three ain't bad.) The factor tugging most determinedly against the tensile strength of this writer's credulity involves the fact that Bruce Willis (and thus the cop he's portraying) is only one year younger than I, and every time he hits the pavement I keep thinking: well, there's another broken bone. And another.
McClane and Farrell: think of one as hardware and the other as software.
The icing on the accelerated heart-rate cake comes in the form of the supporting characters, who - if not finely drawn - are at least sketched in bold and colorful strokes. From Kevin Smith (who plays a know-it-all uber-geek dubbed "Warlock") to Mary Elizabeth Winstead (in the role of Lucy, McClane's estranged but chipped-from-the-self-same-block daughter) to Yorgo Constantine (as Russo, the acrobatic French assassin), each player marks out their own idiosyncratic ring in this high-wire cinema circus act.
One-dimensional? You bet. But string them together and the plot zips along smoothly down the line.
CREEPY IS AS CREEPY DOES: "That was creepy." - a Gabriel hench-geek, in regard to the Presidential video pastiche edited together as a televised warning.
"I tried to find more Nixon." - the video's author.
TOO TRUE: "I'm no doctor, but you look like you're hurt." - Farrell to McClane, following one of his pavement-hitting episodes.
CUT TO THE CHASE: "Enough of this kung fu shit." - McClane to Mai Lihn, after a convincing demonstration of her spin-kicking prowess.
