Movie Review: Examining 'Live Free or Die Hard'

Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

aka Die Hard 4.0

Directed by Len Wiseman

Written by Mark Bomback

Story by Mark Bomback and David Marconi

Based on the article “A Farewell to Arms” by John Carlin and characters created by Roderick Thorp

Starring: Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Cliff Curtis, Maggie Q, Mary Elizabeth Winstead

John McClane: You know what you get for being a hero? Nothin'. You get shot at. You get a little pat on the back, blah, blah, blah, attaboy. You get divorced. Your wife can't remember your last name. Your kids don't want to talk to you. You get to eat a lot of meals by yourself. Trust me, kid, nobody wants to be that guy.

In 2007, after a 12-year hiatus from the role that made him a bankable action-adventure star, Bruce Willis returned as the seemingly indestructible John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard. In the fourth installment of the long-running franchise, McClane’s mettle is tested by a computer expert . Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant), who plans to wreak digital havoc against America’s infrastructure on the Fourth of July. Along the way, McClane  must reluctantly bond with hacker Matt Farrell (Justin Long). trade fisticuffs with Gabriel’s lover/second-in-command Mai (Maggie Q), and rescue his kidnapped daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) from the cyberterrorists’ clutches.

Someone is Killing the Great Hackers of America…..

Live Free or Die Hard (an inspired riff on New Hampshire’s state motto) takes place on a “present day’ or “vaguely near future” Fourth of July in a post-9/11, digitally-connected America.

The FBI’s Cyber-Security Division has been temporarily disrupted, and frantic G-men led by the division’s deputy director, Miguel Bowman (Cliff Curtis) try to track down all the known hackers who can get past government firewalls.

To Bowman’s dismay, someone is killing most of the hackers his agency seeks. Many others, including  Matt Farrell, are next on a list of soon-to-be-terminated cybergeeks working for the lovely but deadly Mai. Intent on saving Farrell and discovering who is behind the cyberattack on the FBI, Bowman asks the New York Police Department to pick the young man up from his New Jersey home and bring him in for questioning.

Lucy McClane: Dad! Stop it! I mean it!

Jim: Dad? You said your dad was dead!

John McClane: What? You told this jerk-off I was dead? You actually said that?

Lucy McClane: I may have exaggerated a little bit.

Meanwhile, down-and-out Detective John McClane is keeping a protective (and unwelcome) parental eye on his estranged college-age daughter Lucy. Their relationship is so strained that Lucy tells potential boyfriends that McClane is dead and  uses her mother’s maiden name, Gennero, instead of her dad’s.  

As McClane intrudes on Lucy and a new boyfriend’s make-out session, he gets a call from his NYPD superiors. They want him to go to nearby Camden, New Jersey, and take Matt Farrell over to the FBI’s Cyber-Security Division in Washington, DC.  

This sounds like a routine protective custody-and-transfer assignment, but for McClane, it is anything but. He arrives at Matt’s apartment just as a team of hit men prepares to kill the young hacker. Using his wits and police-issued firearm, McClane barely saves Matt from a barrage of submachine gun fire and a remotely-detonated bomb planted in the younger man’s computer.

Matt Farrell: Jesus Christ. It's a fire sale.

John McClane: What?

Matt Farrell: It's a fire sale.

Deputy Director Miguel Bowman: Hey! We don't know that yet.

Taylor: Yeah, it's a myth anyway. It can't be done.

Matt Farrell: Oh, it's a myth? Really? Please tell me she's only here for show and she's actually not in charge of anything.

John McClane: Hey, what's a fire sale?

Matt Farrell: It's a three-step... it's a three-step systematic attack on the entire national infrastructure. Okay, step one: take out all the transportation. Step two: the financial base and telecoms. Step three: You get rid of all the utilities. Gas, water, electric, nuclear. Pretty much anything that's run by computers which... which today is almost everything. So that's why they call it a fire sale, because everything must go.

During the drive to Washington, Matt tells McClane that Mai paid him a large sum of money to create a complicated algorithm that can bypass the world’s strongest cyber-defenses.  And later, in Deputy Director Bowman’s office in the FBI building, he recognizes what the cyber-terrorists are planning: a massive attack designed to destroy the nation’s financial, industrial, power generation, and  communication networks.

Eventually, the stage is set for a deadly race against time as McClane attempts to thwart Gabriel’s nefarious schemes. For the veteran New York cop, the stakes go beyond saving his country from disaster when Lucy is kidnapped and held hostage by the cyber-terrorists.

My Take

Matt Farrell: You just killed a helicopter with a car!

John McClane: I was out of bullets

Viewed exclusively as an action-adventure movie, director Len Wiseman’s (Underworld) Live Free or Die Hard  is an entertaining, kick-your-feet-back enterprise with lots of stunts, car chases, and can-you-top-this plot twists designed to thrill the viewer. Unlike Paramount’s Jack Ryan techno-thriller franchise, Live Free or Die Hard focuses more on spectacular visuals that it does on a credible, real-life based plotline.  

Even viewed as a vehicle for Bruce Willis in Action Mode, Live Free or Die Hard  is worth checking out for either a one-time streaming experience or buying it for a low price at Amazon or any other online emporium.

As a Die Hard installment, though, Wiseman’s movie is only slightly better than Die Hard with a Vengeance, the film that preceded it. The reason? Because McClane has a personal stake in stopping Thomas Gabriel when the terrorists kidnap his daughter Lucy.

 

As in the first two Die Hards, John McClane is at his best when he is compelled to take action not to save the world (okay, the nation) but someone he cares about deeply. In Die Hard and its  carbon copy sequel, McClane’s brain was on the mission at hand, but his heart was focused on saving his wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia).

Live Free or Die Hard doesn’t give viewers the John-saves-Holly plot point. Instead, we get a somewhat diluted version of it when the film turns into a father’s mission to rescue his daughter in distress.

Unfortunately, the movie becomes less of a Die Hard installment and more of a mashup between a superhero movie and Fox’s 24 TV series.

In this fourth go-around as John McClane, Bruce Willis still is as fast with a quip as he is with his trigger-finger. However, as the series has progressed and the storytelling canvas gets larger, McClane morphed from his ordinary cop in extraordinary circumstances persona into a weird combo of Superman and Jack Bauer.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead turns in a good performance as Lucy Gennero McClane, even though the script relegates her to the limited  role of daughter-in-distress. Winstead has a strong screen presence and holds her own in her scenes with Willis, so much so that I wish Mark Bomback’s script had dispensed with Matt the hacker and  focused more on the father-daughter relationship.

Timothy Olyphant is watchable as McClane’s antagonist, computer guru Thomas Gabriel. Olyphant’s quiet, understated delivery of his lines and intense stare gives Gabriel a certain chilly menace. Like most actors cast in the key role of a Die Hard villain, though, Olyphant is overshadowed by the memory of Alan Rickman’s suave, elegant yet deadly Hans Gruber.

Justin Long, who is best known for his role as “the Mac Guy” in Apple Computer’s TV commercials, doesn’t fare as well as McClane’s accidental partner against Gabriel. His character, Matt Farrell, is skittish and, let’s be blunt, annoying throughout much of the film.

Though Live Free or Die Hard is not the best installment of the series, it is not the worst of the lot, either. It’s not as violent or mean as Die Hard 2, nor is it as generic as Die Hard with a Vengeance. It’s entertaining, especially for fans of movies full of death-defying stunts and high-energy car chases.

Blu-ray Specifications

Video

• Codec: MPEG-4 AVC (26.85 Mbps)
• Resolution: 1080p
• Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
• Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Audio

• English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
• English: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
• French: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
• Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)

Subtitles

• English SDH, Spanish, Cantonese, Korean

Discs

• 50GB Blu-ray Disc
• Single disc (1 BD)
• D-Box

Playback

• Region A

Miscellaneous

• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• Blu-ray Release Date: November 20, 2007
• Run Time: 128 minutes