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Die Hard is as storied an action film as you're likely to find. The movie's biggest achievement? Transcending the "action movie" label: Die Hard is such a great action flick because it's a great movie first and foremost. The acting is fantastic, the story is wonderfully written & full of unexpected twists and turns, brilliant characterization, an unforgettable villain in Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber, truly spectacular action, and all of that is held together by Bruce Willis's career-defining portrayal of NYPD detective John McClane. As with any successful movie there are bound to be a sequel or two (or four in the case of Die Hard) and, unsurprisingly, each sequel continually diminished what made the first movie so special.
None of Die Hard's sequels are particularly awful. Even my least favorite installment, the Renny Harlin-helmed Die Hard 2: Die Harder, has enough spark to keep its two hour runtime light and breezy. Die Hard With a Vengeance - the franchise's third sequel - is often considered the series' second best and it isn't hard to see why. Director John McTiernan is as much a part of Die Hard's success as Bruce Willis's inimitable performance. Renny Harlin was no John McTiernan and the latter filmmaker's return to the franchise is felt from the very first time John McClane is reintroduced to us. He's pissed off, smoking a cigarette, and nursing a legendary hangover. With a Vengeance capped off the trilogy properly. A bit light on the action, perhaps, but a satisfying concluding chapter nonetheless.
12 years after the third came the Len Wiseman-directed Live Free or Die Hard. There's something unexplainably enigmatic about this film. I'm sure you've read all about it by now and you're likely to have your own opinion on the matter. Live Free or Die Hard is the first (and only) entry in the series to be given a PG-13 rating. The other Die Hard's have been unmistakably R-rated undertakings. While some are more violent or profane than others to varying degrees, the franchise has retained its penchant for gritty violence and John McClane's love of the F-bomb for three films prior and one film after. That PG-13 rating means you aren't going to get the salty language, bloody violence, and perma-smoking John McClane. Some argue that those changes are all cosmetic and don't affect the overall integrity of the movie. But does it? Absolutely. McClane is rough around the edges and the confines of the PG-13 limits just how rough he can be.
What's enigmatic about Live Free or Die Hard is how good a sequel it is despite the imposed limitations. Len Wiseman is a fervent admirer of the franchise & its lore, and he makes it known as often as he possibly can. Willis is no stranger to outspokenness and he's been quite vocal through the years about his general distaste for self-reference in these movies. Wiseman is an obvious advocate of it and must have given Bruce some heavy-duty convincing to be allowed the amount he's squeezed into this one. Live Free... is loaded with subtle callbacks and in-jokes longtime fans are going to have a ball with. If there's one thing Live Free or Die Hard has in spades, it's humor. Maybe a little too much humor, in fact. McClane must have set a record for number of wisecracks in a single Die Hard movie, and most of them are positively crackling. What does McClane say when asked why he's just launched a car into a helicopter? "I was out of bullets." How does McClane respond to blowing a terrorist out of an apartment complex window? "That's going to wake the neighbors." The villain remarks that he thought he'd have killed McClane by now to which John dryly retorts, "Yeah, I get that sometimes." Willis was obviously having a great time and it shows. He's looking a bit tired by this go 'round - wearing his early 50s on his sleeve just as prominently as the bloody gashes on his face - but he capably embodies McClane once again despite his bald head and milder demeanor. Fans haven't been kind to Bruce's performance in this film and I've never understood why. McClane is physically & emotionally worn out by this point in his life. He's been through hell three times over, definitively divorced, his daughter can't stand him, and he's a decorated detective reduced to being a glorified babysitter. He's not meant to be in a great mood and so Willis is understated for a portion of the film.
Live Free... knows its pedigree and fully embraces it. It's a huge summer movie that wants you to have as much fun watching it as the cast and crew had making it. That's ultimately the movie's biggest problem. The other Die Hard's are aware of their audience's expectations and thirst for exciting action all the while maintaining a certain level of intelligence and realism. These are movies designed for entertainment and, as such, I'm not expecting them to be completely true to life, but Live Free or Die Hard is the most unhinged entry in the entire franchise. I'd go as far as to argue that the original trilogy couldn't match this one's level of ridiculousness between them. That sequence in With a Vengeance where John rides a wave of water through the New York sewer system? Child's play. Live Free... finds him going mano e mano with a fighter jet, dodging flying cars, climbing through an SUV suspended inside of an elevator shaft , and that's just the short list. And the fighter jet I mentioned? Somehow our hero manages to traverse an imploding freeway in a semi-truck, dodging the aircraft's gunfire, and gets himself on top of the vehicle only to surf it for a few seconds and jump off just before it engulfs itself. The action can (and often does) get absurdly unrealistic, but it's unquestionably entertaining. Wiseman's action sequences are some of the most exciting, well-choreographed, and executed of the entire franchise.
Wiseman and company are keen on keeping the Die Hard spirit alive so well most of the time that it's downright inexplicable why they decided to take this entry so above and beyond the plausible limits McClane should and could be able to tolerate. The vast majority of Live Free... is pitch-perfect Die Hard, right down to the villains' motives and their reliance on communicating with McClane via walkie-talkie. The cat-and-mouse game played between John and the film's main villain, Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant), is so Die Hard that it hurts. The two banter back and forth with each other, Gabriel's threats one-upped by McClane's dry rebuttals effortlessly. In typical fashion, Gabriel underestimates McClane and it always comes back on him tenfold. Olyphant doesn't make a great villain, unfortunately, though that doesn't stop him from giving it his best effort. He's a good verbal jouster for Willis, but totally non-threatening and doesn't have the physicality to make Gabriel imposing. He brandishes a gun with the best of them but he's no physical match for John, leaving most of the heavy lifting to his mercenaries. That's fine and dandy but, barring Maggie Q's formidable Mai, Gabriel's cronies are wholly dispensable. Maggie Q gets a one-on-one fistfight with Willis that's one of the best the series has to offer; McClane gets whooped kicked in spectacular fashion.
You'd think with all the explosions, gunfights, fistfights, and assorted mayhem permeating this flick there wouldn't be much time for plot. Again, Live Free or Die Hard surprises. Mark Bomback's screenplay is adapted from John Carlin's A Call to Arms, an original story Bomback re-worked into a Die Hard sequel. The idea of a group of virtual terrorists attacking the United States' infrastructure is novel and effectively brings the franchise to modern relevancy. It's a new school plot with an old school protagonist and Len Wiseman milks the concept for all its worth. McClane's reluctant sidekick this time out is Matt Ferrell (Justin Long), a New Jersey computer hacker whose competition is systematically murdered, leaving him wanted for questioning by the FBI following a series of security breaches. Naturally, it becomes Detective McClane's task to deliver him to the Feds. He gets in over his head almost immediately after meeting Ferrell, getting swarmed in Ferrell's apartment by Gabriel's thugs, and quicker than you can say Yippee-ki-yay, John's back in the thick of it. As you may expect, Long is utilized for comic relief, though he's utilized effectively. Some aren't going to like his whiny, motor-mouthed shtick, but he gels with Willis exceptionally well and adds credence to the film's plot. Ferrell islikable and provides some genuinely funny moments when necessary.
Live Free or Die Hard parallels the original in that McClane eventually finds himself rescuing a family member. In the first and second it was his estranged wife, in this one it's his daughter, Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Lucy runs afoul of Gabriel leading up to the movie's third act. Her character feels a bit shoehorned in, totally absent from the film sans the beginning until it's time for a new plot device. Don't misunderstand me, though; Winstead is an incredible actress and she did a terrific job with the part. She's bad-ass and vulnerable in equal measure. That leads me into my second problem with Live Free or Die Hard: it's too long. Wiseman could have shaved a solid 20 minutes off of this bugger and it would have been a better movie because of it. Cliff Curtis (Deputy Director Bowman) is one of my favorite actors but is utterly wasted here. His character does nothing but deliver exposition, which isn't a problem per se, except that it's exposition we're set to learn again 10 minutes later. Said exposition is left to Kevin Smith's ill-advised cameo as Ferrell's friend and fellow hacker, Warlock. Smith's appearance should have been left on the cutting room floor as well. I suppose in the right frame of mind (and depending on how much you like Kevin Smith) it's funny in an ironic sort of way, but his scenes slow the pace to a snail's crawl.
Live Free or Die Hard could have used some hefty editing to iron some of this out. A scene at the halfway point perfectly illustrates how the bloated runtime hurts the film. Gabriel's boys flood the news stations with an image of the White House, accompanied by details of how the combined effects of their attack will cripple the country, followed shortly thereafter by footage of the White House exploding, which is obviously an elaborate ruse. Why? I have no idea. It serves the plot in no way whatsoever. The Die Hard's preceding this one are of equal length so I suppose the goal was to eek out a minimum two-hour runtime. It's overlong and because of that becomes a chore to sit through during its final act.
Perhaps that's just nitpicking because everything about this one otherwise is rock solid. Unfortunately, the incredible picture quality and window-rattling (no, seriously) DTS HD 5.1 track were undermined for years by Fox's decision to release the Blu-ray with only the PG-13 version included. Thankfully, with the most recent Blu-ray collection, that's been remedied; it's the first time ever the unrated cut has seen a Blu-ray release. The unrated cut, unsurprisingly, is the superior release of the movie as it reinserts the profanity and bloodshed that had been removed from the original version of the film. The decision to shoot for a PG-13 instead of an R is an interesting one as, according to Len Wiseman, Fox decided halfway through production that they wanted the more audience-friendly rating. Much of the R-rated dialogue had already been shot, as had some of the bloodier shootouts. While the deleted F-bombs were in fact recorded during production, this new cut doesn't alter any of the previous version's takes so the profanity is just dubbed on top of the current footage. It amounts to some peculiar instances where a character's mouth is covered when the word is uttered and, if you look closely enough, you'll notice instances where their lips aren't moving at all. You likely won't notice them if you aren't actively searching for them; most of the time it blends right in. Some scenes are notable for having the character visibly mouth these words, lending weight to Wiseman's claims of already filming some of these sequences. The unrated version also alters a few lines of dialogue (mostly substituting brilliant one-liners for rather mediocre ones) or eliminating some bits of dialogue entirely.
If there's proof that a talented director and actor that care about the quality of the franchise they're attached to can outweigh questionable executive decisions, it's Live Free or Die Hard. For all intents and purposes this flick was rushing headlong into an early death. It should have sucked and bombed miserably. Lord knows most fans were waiting for that. Lo and behold it ends up being the best reviewed franchise entry since the first, made huge bank at the box office, and quickly became my second favorite Die Hard movie right behind the first. Live Free... is a heck of a good time. There are shortcomings abound, some a lot more prevalent than others, but its heart is in the right place and that certainly counts for something. The action sequences are worth the price of admission alone. Sure, it's offensively over-the-top at times and a bit too self-aware to take seriously, but it's fun. Len Wiseman knows exactly the kind of movie this is, what you're expecting from it, and does nothing more than deliver on that promise. Live Free or Die Hard is a great time and a damn good sequel, nailing what makes this franchise so awesome and effectively migrates those classic elements into a modern update indelibly.
9/10
