Die hardly

>> The fourth installment in the
action series is sadly generic

by MARK SLUTSKY

They’ve finally made another, fourth Die Hard, some dozen years after the last, but they’ve somehow forgotten to actually make it a Die Hard movie. Instead, Live Free or Die Hard resembles a retrofitted ’90s cyber-thriller, with a computer hacker villain, nerdy sidekicks and tense moments in front of countless keyboards.

The first movie still holds up as a classic of action filmmaking, a refreshingly down-to-earth take on a genre that had gone pretty insane in the ’80s. There was just one building, a handful of bad guys and one ill-prepared dude in the form of New York cop John McClane, played of course by Bruce Willis. He didn’t even have shoes, and director John McTiernan took advantage of details like a floor strewn with broken glass to create some really inventive, exciting suspense.

This movie, directed by Len Wiseman (Underworld), ignores all of the first movie’s smart ideas. While Die Hard’s basic concept was so brilliantly simple—dude stuck in a confined space with bad guys—as to spawn a million “Die Hard in a...” imitators, Live Free or Die Hard has Willis all over the place, in generic tunnels, power stations and apartment buildings.

The “man alone” concept is shot as well, as youngster Justin Long, playing a nebbish computer genius, is along for the ride as well. See, he’s the only one who can take on bad guy Timothy Olyphant, an even more powerful hacker who’s shutting down the country to siphon some money into his bank account. Of course, our main man’s an old-fashioned get-things-done kind of action hero, so he needs the kid to attend to all the cyberfoolery while he takes care of the wisecracks.

It’s weird. The movie seemingly comes out in favour of crusty old analog John McClane and his techno-skeptical ways, while at the same time succumbing to the lure of lame computer-themed suspense that everyone got bored of circa Hackers and The Net. That said, there are a few decent set pieces, and the occasionally funny one-liner. But the movie’s edge is blunted by the fact that it’s been edited down to a PG-13 rating, meaning that you don’t even get to hear Willis yell “Yippee-ki-yay-motherfucker!” in full. And that’s pretty sad.

Live Free or Die Hard is now in theatres

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