John McClane always seems to find himself in the most interesting of situations. This time he has to pick up a computer hacker for the feds and finds himself involved in a full-scale cyber attack against Washington D.C. However, John’s methods tend to be a little bit more old school.
John McClane’s life pretty much sucks at the moment. He’s divorced and his daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) doesn’t want anything to do with him. He’s still looking out for her best interests, which doesn’t exactly sit well with her. While having a father-daughter confrontation he gets the call that a senior detective is needed to pick up a suspected hacker for the Feds.
John goes to the apartment of Matt Farrell (Justin Long) to take him into custody. However, some terrorists show up to send Matt into the hereafter and McClane gets to do his thing. Soon another group of hackers led by Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) brings the city to its knees and into chaos by sabotaging the infrastructure.
To make matters worse, McClane and Matt head to stop them from destroying the power grid, which can only be done by hand and not electronically, and don’t make very nice with Gabriel’s tough girlfriend Mai (Maggie Q). This causes Gabriel to kidnap Lucy and that’s one thing that you don’t want to do to John McClane is to mess with his family.
I’ll have to admit that when I heard that another outing was in the works for John McClane that I had my doubts. It didn’t help matters that the film had been reduced to a rating of PG-13. I had my doubts that anyone in that age range would really know who McClane was and that the film would’ve been sanitized below what older audiences would’ve been expecting from a Die Hard picture.
However, I have to report that the film turns out to be pretty good and full of action. McClane is getting a bit long in the tooth (you imagine the line from Lethal Weapon – “I’m getting too old for this shit.”) but he still manages to seem pretty badass in the role. Where the film might be a bit of a letdown is in the villain department.
Olyphant is okay, but he’s not Alan Rickman. It might’ve been a better film if perhaps Kevin Smith (who plays the minor role of the hacker Warlock aka Freddy Kaludis) had been cast in that role instead of the clean-cut Olyphant. There’s a bit set piece with a semi-truck and a jet that is a bit farfetched towards the end and appears to be assembled mostly with CGI.
Unfortunately, the big show down with the villain is a bit anticlimactic and is over very quickly. Even with those quibbles, the film was a high-octane action romp that I quite enjoyed.
Live Free or Die Hard is presented in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Disc one contains the feature in both PG-13 (theatrical) and Unrated versions.
The special feature on disc one is a commentary with Bruce Willis, director Len Wiseman, and editor Nicholas De Toth. Disc two starts off with the excellent 97 minute “Analog Hero in a Digital World: the Making of Live Free of Die Hard.” Next is the 22 minute “Yippee Ki Yay Motherf*****!” which is Bruce Willis and Kevin Smith sitting on the Fox backlot and talking about the film.
The 4-minute “Die Hard” by Guyz Nite music video sounded lame, but actually turned out to be damn fun and I had to watch it twice. We get to meet the band in the 5 minute “Behind the scenes with Guyz Nite.” The 6-minute “Fox Movie Channel presents Fox Legacy” examines the Die Hard franchise. Finally we have the 2-minute theatrical trailer and trailers for other Fox films.
Live Free or Die Hard didn’t sound like a good idea when I heard about it but it turned out to be a great action adventure romp and good fun for John McClane. Yippee Ki Yay… well, you know.
Live Free or Die Hard - Unrated (Two-Disc Special Edition) is now available at Amazon and AmazonUK . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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