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Live Free or Die Hard
The economics of heroism
2005
Review: July 10, 2007
Director: Len Wiseman
Starring: Bruce Willis, Timothy Olyphant, Justin Long, Maggie Q
A good bet.
THE SETUP:
Bruce Willis does his thing some more.
DISCUSSION:
Sorry, I wanted to see this. So do a lot of people I know, even those who normally eschew the giant action-thriller. I think because the way it looks like it has a sense of ironic distance on being a giant action-thriller and thus places showing you a good time above reasonability. And that turned out to be exactly how it was.
I must mention that during the two month long ad campaign which kept this film’s title in my mind, the current craze in advertising for “Live ____ly” taglines took on a new meaning. Thus for Citibank: “Live Richly… or DIE HARD.” For some luxury condo: “Live Opulently… or DIE HARD,” and my favorite mangling of English, from a New Jersey Transit bus: “Walk Alertly…”
Okay, so we begin with all these young hackers completing a little exercise… or so they think! They transmit their work, then the bad guys transmit money into their accounts, then kill them. It would seem that it is possible to remotely upload a virus into someone’s computer that will not only erase their hard drive, but transform their computer into a bomb powerful enough to destroy their entire house!
So with most of them all dead, the bad guys briefly shut down power at the government’s cyber security division as a sort of shot across their bow. It works!
We then meet FD3 Chick Mary Elizabeth Winstead as John McClane’s daughter Lucy who expresses that no means no. John shows up and we have some character-setting family drama. Lucy goes to her room and waits to be abducted later, as becomes increasingly obvious she will be with every moment she has entirely vanished from the story.
John, who I will mention once and once only is lookin’ FINE, gets a call to go pick up this hacker kid Matt played by Justin Long of Jeepers Creepers and Idiotocracy and ads for AT&T or some such. I’m glad to see him because he’s always been quite good. John comes to his door, there is much slacker sass, and then a team arrives to kill the kid. Yo-de-do, big shootout, and they escape.
So the bad guys are in their techno-lab and cause havoc with a number of computer-controlled things, knocking out power to the FBI, calling in Anthrax threats, and switching traffic signals and causing accidents and motor vehicle shutdown all over DC. I can’t remember the bad guy’s name right now, and for some reason I’m inclined to call him Clu-Clu. Let's do that. He has a lover and assistant in Asian Maggie Q, who is a bit of a dragon lady, so much so that a stereotype-balancing attractive Asian woman in the FBI office is given enhanced coverage.
We then head into some hardcore alternative political views as Matt informs us that the news media is manipulated to keep the populous in fear and keep consumers buying. No argument here, I’m just surprised to be hearing it in this movie. A further slap in the face is delivered when Matt intuits that what’s happening is a “fire sale,” which is where you shut everything down at once, bringing the nation to its knees. John says “the government has departments to handle things like that,” to which Matt retorts, “It took them five days to get water to the Superdome.” Oooooh, SNAP!
So DC is brought to a standstill. At least on selected streets. You will notice that while mobs of people are milling about and traffic is gridlocking intersections, other areas of the city are virtually empty and traffic free. Such are the strange and eerie effects of cyber-terrorism. Then Clu-Clu takes over the TV and broadcasts a few messages… the first a kind of neat YouTube-inspired speech made up of speeches by presidents edited together. Then messages saying like what if you called 911 and no one was there or there was no one to help you in the Linens section or they were out of Pear Crème Brulee after-bath powder and they weren’t going to have any more in until after the apocalypse. So obviously the populous is FREAKED. And then they show the explosion of the White House clip from Independence Day and everybody thinks it’s real but McClane and the mysteriously alluring Indian man know it’s fake.
So in here there’s a ton of escapes and explosions and stunts and stuff that I don’t even have the energy to describe, but they’re all kind of fun and are pointed at the feeling that McClane is this awesome superhero. So one doesn’t complain that the helicopter just HAPPENED to be directly in line with the fire hydrant so that it would be shot with water when McClane ran over the hydrant, because the whole idea is so fun and cool. Plus, I liked the way McClane chortles with glee after taking villains out in a particularly clever way. You also notice that although tons of people are getting shot, none of them release any blood. And one wonders why that thing where they call you in your car if your airbag goes off is working fine when every other system in the country is down? But you don’t really care.
So now the bad guys want to take out this power plant that is the lynchpin for the entire Eastern US. Maggie Q lands there and kills the three employees who are manning this most important [and apparently understaffed] power plant. She’s downloading all sorts of bank data, because not only are the bad guys going to teach America a lesson, they’re going to steal a lot of money while doing it. This is very important for the movie to work, because if Clu-Clu was doing all this so the US could improve security, some in the audience could consider him a good guy, and might not be totally behind him getting blown away at the end. But, since he’s stealing money for himself, he is clearly beyond the pale as a bad guy, and our sadistic impulses toward him can flow freely.
SPOILERS > > >
So McClane shows up and has a fight with Maggie Q. Now, normally you notice in movies that men are not really allowed to beat women, which is why there’s usually some other woman and it almost always works out that the two women fight each other. This movie, trying to shake up the formula, has Q beat McClane quite severely, which “excuses” him for then beating the shit out of her and ramming her through two walls with an SUV. It’s also important for our ability to maintain McClane’s hero status that he not directly kill her, but that she fall to the bottom of the elevator shaft and the car fall atop her. I think the film goes a little too far in thinking it has avoided misogyny, however, when McClane immediately after gloats to Clu-Clu that he’s killed his girlfriend [“Asian chick? Likes to kick?”], but implies that he could easily pick up another Asian whore like her on the street.
So then McClane’s daughter is kidnapped, like we knew she would be. And we find out what the bad guy wants: he was a member of the CIA [or whoever] and presented the government with a report on its massive vulnerabilities after 9/11. The government chose to do nothing, so the bad guy is making it happen as a sort of psycho-patriotism thing. That’s what I mean about how his status as “Villain” could be considered cloudy if he weren’t also stealing money. By the way, we are told that if all the financial information in US computers were erased, we would be sent “back to the stone age,” and would apparently abandon our luxury condos and SUVs and iPods and hunt buffalo in packs whilst living in caves. That’s the harsh threat we live under, ladies and gentlemen.
So there’s about 75 other chases and stunts and explosions and finally they get the bad guy. In here there’s a thing where an F-35 [that’s a jet plane] comes after McClane and blows up a freeway overpass and then McClane jumps onto the plane and then in crashes. You will notice how the economics of herohood and villainy continue as we have a special shot of the F-35 pilot landing safely after ejecting, as he is not a bad guy, but a good guy given orders by a bad guy. Anyway, one could form a convincing argument that this scene is just the slightest bit over the top. Personally, I think they should have left it out of the movie [thus saving millions] because it’s SO OTT it somehow crosses the line and makes the movie silly, while at the same time adding nothing to the story.
< < < SPOILERS END
It was fun at the movies. Like I said, this installment seems to have only the slightest interest in being anything but a bunch of “awesome” action sequences in a row, and McClane is much more cavalier and casual about the whole thing, and I think that whole ironic distance makes it work. Without it, this type of action movie would seem hopelessly out-of-date [witness Firewall, although I didn’t], and this one comes off as fairly hip. Not least because of its up-to-the-minute cyber plot and interesting and, for once, non-offensive use of 9/11 as a plot device. I also have to say that [for the first 45 minutes, at least, before I stopped noticing] I was enjoying the directorial style of Len Wiseman [the Underworld guy! How embarrassing!]. He tells the story in a sensible way, you can tell where everything is, he choreographs the stunts so they have bang, and he keeps delivering information. I barely thought about this movie again once I left the theater, but it entertained me for two hours while I was there.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Sure, if you want.
