Movie Review: Live Free or Die Hard

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Great action and good acting

Cons: Story suffers at expense of action

The Bottom Line:

The action is king

But it's a wild ride with

Straight forward story

"Have You Done Stuff Like This Before?"  "Not for a Long Time."

Even though I know that Hollywood is not above making yet another sequel or, these days, remake.  Still, I was surprised when Live Free or Die Hard came out in 2007, 12 years after the last entry in the series.  Not that I’m complaining because it was a fun action movie.

John McClane (Bruce Willis) is once again at the wrong place at the wrong time when he goes to pick up hacker Matt Farrell (Justin Long) and take him to FBI headquarters for questioning.  See, Matt is a hacker, and someone just hacked the FBI briefly.

However, before they can arrive, someone starts mass confusion.  At first it’s just street lights not working, but it quickly escalates.  It’s the work of Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant).  What is his motive?  Will McClane stay alive long enough to stop him?

Some fans of the series hated this entry, and I can see some of their complaints.  It focuses more on action over plot.  While the story in this franchise has always been an excuse for the action scenes, that’s truer here.  There are fewer twists as we race toward the nail biting climax.

You want more proof of that?  The action scenes are even more ridiculous.  The movie takes full advantage of modern special effects to create over the top set pieces.  While part of my brain was screaming at me about how unrealistic things were, the rest of me wasn’t complaining because I loved it.  Yes, I’m willing to admit I enjoy over the top exciting action, and that’s exactly what this movie delivers in spades.

Another complaint was the original PG-13 rating.  Now that the movie is out on DVD, you can always watch an unrated version that is in keeping with the language and violence from the earlier R entries in the franchise.  That’s what I watched, and honestly I wouldn’t have minded seeing the original version.

While there is little in the script to gives the characters depth, the actors all do fine with their performances.  Timothy Olyphant always makes a great psychotic villain.  As a fan of Nikita, I enjoyed seeing Maggie Q here.  Some fans think Bruce Willis was flat, but I enjoyed his performance.  But my favorite was Justin Long as the out of his element computer hacker.  He was funny and helped ground events.

There are a few references to characters from previous films, but really this one stands on its own.  So feel free to jump in here if you haven’t seen the earlier films.

This isn’t quite up to the better films in the Die Hard franchise, but for pure action fun, it’s easy to like Live Free or Die Hard.