Live Free or Die Hard

We have now arrived at the fourth Die Hard movie, “Die Hard 4.0,” also known as “Live Free or Die Hard,” released in 2007. So far the series has given us scenes of civil aviation hijack, skyscraper attacks with bodies falling down with them and a New York plagued by explosions. It wasn’t anything unusual back in the days before the scary 9/11 with the grand-scale civilian terror was a pin Hollywood pleasure. “Die Hard with a Vengeance” showed Manhattan office workers eating popcorn while taking a look at the destruction in the streets. In this type of situation, people obviously took terrorist attacks more personally than that, both in the moment and when dealing with the fight. Inspired by an article in WIRED about the threat to homeland security from systems hacking, “Live Free or Die Hard” happily utilizes the grim possible consequences of such ‘soft strikes’ plans, yet proposes the particularly September 10 solution of an individual hero – and reserves on its audience when they are reaching for their popcorn, like back in the day.

Once again we see Bruce Willis reprise his role as NYPD detective John McClane, in the usual position: being at the wrong place at the wrong time. This time he is divorced from his wife, in Washington D.C. on Independence Day, just as the forces invisible scheme to shut down the security and transport systems of the city and its neighbors. Chaos follows and McClane gets himself ready to save the day with blood ‘n’ grit, this time working with a young hacker named Matt Farrell, played by Justin Long. On the other side of McClane are Maggie Q as Mai Linh, Timothy Olyphant as Thomas Gabriel, director and producer Kevin Smith as Frederick ‘Warlock’ Kaludis, Justin Long as Thomas Gabriel, Cliff Curtis as Miguel Bowman, and Jonathan Sadowski as Trey. McClane’s teenage daughter, Lucy, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, is also running around.

Just like in the other “Die Hard” movies, a hero who once declared that “progress peaked with frozen pizza” is inclined against complex systems being abused by knuckleheads with delusions of dignity, though McClane is now harder to accept than ever as an everyman figure: once bleeding and battling alone, he is now successfully a superhuman with a sidekick whose theatre has expanded from the boundaries of an office block to the entire eastern seaboard. Ben Walters of Time Out says, “McClane’s yen for remote communication with his foes now benefits from video conferencing and the series’ long-standing soft spot for pornographic explosions is ratcheted up a few notches too – as is the scale of the action sequences.” If the collapse of the US capital’s social and civic transportation doesn’t gives enough of a punch, you also get a fighter jet facing off against a juggernaut.

Len Wiseman, who directed the “Underworld series,” handles many of the set-pieces with style and tension: a mass pile-up in an underpass is very successful, and there’s a real sense of panic to the city’s awareness that it’s under attack. But if the film recognizes the increased conceivability of such violence, it’s only to use the audience’s fears. If the series’ diehard bad feeling is treated here more than ever, so is its silly corniness: national meltdown, it insists, is simple next to a father’s violent love for his daughter.

I would give “Live Free or Die Hard” a 9.5. Ironically, I rated this series from best to worst the same way as I did with the “Indiana Jones series.” But how does the fifth film turn out? Will it be the best one, the worst one, or somewhere in the middle? Find out next week when I finish off “Die Hard month.”