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I'm not the sort of film critic who jots down ecstatic remarks during a screening. But about an hour into "Live Free or Die Hard," I scrawled in my notebook: "Ah, American movies!"

This might have been after a sequence in which New York City Police Detective John McClane ( Bruce Willis ), driving through Washington, D.C., with a nerdy hacker named Matt ( Justin Long ) in custody, evades the bad guys' pursuing helicopter by crashing into a fire hydrant so that the force of the vertical spray knocks the chopper out of its flight pattern ... then gets trapped in a tunnel full of cars speeding both ways and one car tumbling through the air directly at them, and they miss being killed because just as the car is to land on them, two other vehicles drive on either side of the guys and the hurtling car lands smack on top of the other two ... and then McClane jumps in another car, speeds it up a makeshift ramp at the end of the tunnel and jumps out just in time to see it hit and demolish the low-flying chopper. "Jesus," says Matt, "you killed a helicopter with a car!" McClane: "I ran out of bullets."

It's been said by our friends, and by our foes: Movies plus cars equals America. Well, car stunts plus a star like Bruce Willis equals a good action movie. A scene like the one in "Live Free or Die Hard" lets crazy-gifted stunt drivers bend the laws of physics, geometry and adrenaline to create a moviegoer's contact high. And since it seems to be achieved with a minimum of computer legerdemain and a maximum of ingenious skill, the scene triggers the satisfyingly old-fashioned vibe audiences used to get from action-movie entertainment they believed people had risked their lives to provide. (Or maybe the digital people have got so good at their job, it just looks handmade.)

There are also some potent, graceful physical stunts, with baddies swinging lithely over railings and through the cogs of menacing machinery. (Parkour, the streetwise athletic discipline that got its first big showcase in the French film "District 13" and was appropriated for several snazzy scenes in " Casino Royale " (2007), gets another handsome workout here.) The impact of these stunts, and the gritty, industrial look favored by director Len Wiseman , will make you think that somebody got dirty making this movie. Actually, a Willis stunt double, Larry Rippenkroeger, got pretty banged up after a 25-ft. fall from a scaffold to the pavement: he sustained two broken arms, a skull fracture, fractured ribs and a punctured lung. Rippenkroeger, happily, is now back at work. Stunt guys can bounce back from almost anything.

In a couple of pleasing ways besides the car-nage and the stunts, this fourth entry in the " Die Hard " series -- and the first since " Die Hard With a Vengeance " in 1995 -- is an American anachronism. It renounces the recent movie trend of foreign, mostly Muslim, terrorists for the good old, bad old U.S. type. For too long Hollywood has ceded these plum roles to Asians and Middle Easterners, as if America didn't have its own colorful history of homegrown crazies determined to wipe us all out. Does no one remember Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, the still-at-large anthrax mailer from September 2001? Our popular culture has been falling sadly behind in the Evil Genius category. "Live Free or Die Hard" is a solid start in helping us close the Political Psychopath gap -- in reopening, for movie business, our Department of Homeland Terrorism.

The villain here, Thomas Gabriel ( Timothy Olyphant ), is a computer guru who created the ultimate security program for the federal government, and since he believes his masterpiece was horribly compromised, this ex-Fed decides to show his old bosses what life would be like if everything run by computers -- which is to say, just about everything -- were to shut down. Essentially a higher-IQ update of the disgruntled postal worker, Gabriel is played by Olyphant as a white-collar nut-case: a good-looking fellow with a professionally calm voice (the better to mask his malevolence) and the permanently intense stare that other people would get only if they'd had Murine dropped in their eyes every 10 seconds.

It's the bane of our Internet age that the basic visual motif of action epics, from the first "Mission Impossible" movie on, is: shots of guys typing. We see the villains crouched over their Macs to input some world-destroying program, then the good guys trying to type in the antidote. "Live Free or Die Hard" has a lot, too much, of this too, but at least it's true to the plot dreamed up by Mark Bomback and David Marconi . Gabriel orders his brainy minions to shut down the nation's stop lights, electricity and phone lines, while Matt -- the hacker who had, unawares, devised an algorithm that was used in Gabriel's grand scheme -- struggles to break the code while dodging bullets coming his and McClane's way. "I honestly don't think I can handle any more people trying to kill me," the frazzled Matt complains to McClane, who replies, from the experience of the first three "Die Hard"s, "Oh, you get used to it."

McClane is the central anachronism of the piece -- "a Timex watch in a digital age," as Matt tells him -- and the movie's definitive statement that there's still room for a dinosaur hero, if only to fight the enveloping military-computerate complex. (John McClane for President!) Much has been made of Willis' weathered look, and his loss of hair, and a paunch that I didn't notice. But the man is 52, and the one star from the Bronzed Age of 80s action movies who still can persuasively embody a haunted, implacable stud. Chuck Norris went into TV, and Jean-Claude VanDamme to made-for-video cheapies. Schwarzenegger's in the public sector. Jackie Chan has a third " Rush Hour " movie coming out in August, but a lifetime of martial-arts exertions has rendered him creaky. Only Willis remains -- the last action hero.

The first Die Hard picture came out in 1988, when Willis was a pup of 33. He's played this character, on and off, for most of his professional career, and it still suits. McClane gives him juice; he gives McClane grit. The part lets him jump around and show off his agility. (In what may be a one-stunt-too-many scene within the movie's long climax, he hitches a ride on the wing of a fighter jet.) In turn, Willis, with his coiled poise and the compact gestures of an assured star, exudes worldly wariness and cosmic weariness, as if he'd achieved a state of Zen machismo. He's so close to a still life, his own heroic statue, that we may wonder if the McClane character is even alive. "I thought I killed you already," a bad guy says, and Willis-McClane replies, "I get that a lot."

He survives that licking to keep on kicking, notably in a hanging-by-a-car-fender-at-the-top-of-an-elevator-shaft fight scene with Gabriel's hottie henchwoman (played by Vietnamese-Polish-Irish-American stunner Maggie Q and her stunt-double, Boni Yanagisawa). "Live Free or Die Hard" has a lot of this muscular bustle, considering its the first movie in the series not rated R. To get a PG-13, Wiseman & Co. made the violence cleaner, leaving out the reaction shots you'd get in an R-rated film of, say, a thug with his face blown off. At times it plays like the airline version of the real movie. But it still packs a punch, lots of them.

The other characters are around mostly to take punches. To establish Matt's credentials as a young cyber-dweeb, Long, best known as the hip kid ("I'm a Mac") in the Apple commercials, is required to do more whining than absolutely necessary, or attractive; but he's basically here to be the audience's surrogate, to express amazement at flights of fancy and lapses into implausibility. As McClane's daughter Lucy, Mary Elizabeth Winstead -- who ornamented the year's other big car-stunt movie, Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof" -- has enough resentment and resolve to suggest a familial link to our prehistoric hero. Writer-director Kevin Smith (" Clerks .") has a nice bit as the basement-dwelling Jabba the Hutt of hackers. But did no one think to fill the role with Long's partner in the Apple spots ("I'm a PC"), John Hodgman ? His sedentary smarminess and air of knowing more than he does would make for a wonderful movie character. Or movie critic.

In the movie's final showdown, Gabriel sneers: "On your tombstone it should read, 'Always in the wrong place at the wrong time.'" (To which McClane with his trademarked "Yippie-ki-yay," etc. etc.) It turns out that McClane, Willis and "Live Free or Die Hard" are in the right place at the right time. In the middle of a summer season already exhausted with sequels depending too much on visual effects, here's a throwback to remind you what American movies can do best. Enough of the ghost pirates and silver surfers! Up with cool stunts and car crashes! Real action films may be the wave of the past but, as this one splendidly shows, they'll live free before they die hard.

Richard Corliss writes on movies and popular culture for Time magazine and Time.com. His tribute to Roger Ebert is here: www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1636520,00.html

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Movie Review | 'Live Free or Die Hard'

Pick Your Poison: Fists or Fireballs

By Manohla Dargis

June 27, 2007

The gasping, grunting and oozing hard-body slab that muscles, and sometimes crawls, through "Live Free or Die Hard" sure looks like John McClane. Older if apparently no wiser, the blue-collar super-cop from the "Die Hard" franchise has lost his hair, his foul mouth and apparently his nicotine itch, but he still has the same knack for trouble, the adrenaline-pumping, cheerfully anarchic kind that causes cars to ignite, bodies to fly, eardrums to pop and hearts to race and gladden. He's also lost his sneer, but sneering is cheap, and movies are expensive, especially when your star has pushed past 50 and slid off the power lists.

A lot has happened in the 12 years since Bruce Willis yippee-kai-yay-ed in "Die Hard With a Vengeance" with a glowering Samuel L. Jackson in tow. During that time Mr. Willis's star has expanded and collapsed through hits and duds and plenty of personal off-screen noise. The world has changed too, of course, and with it the action-flick coordinates: for one, Arnold Schwarzenegger runs California, while the sober, nonwisecracking likes of Matt Damon's Bourne rules the bad-boy roost. For another: Mr. Willis has become an increasingly appealing character actor, the kind who punches up a scene or two ("Alpha Dog," "Fast Food Nation") or an entire movie ("16 Blocks"), mostly by playing it not so nice and very easy.

Life or age or something has mellowed Mr. Willis. He no longer enters a movie like God's gift, as he did almost two decades ago in the first "Die Hard," lips pursed as if he alone were in on the joke — which, given the fat salary he was earning, perhaps he was. In "Live Free or Die Hard" he enters swinging, fist smashing through hard glass and sinking into soft flesh. He's making a point and so is the movie, namely that McClane (and Mr. Willis) is ready to earn our love again by performing the same lovably violent, meathead tricks as before. And look, he's not laughing, not exactly, even if the film ends up a goof.

An unexpectedly funny goof, at that, despite everything, including the mayhem and somewhat creepy plot. The screenplay attributed to Mark Bomback, who shares the story credit with David Marconi, has the whiff of multiple writers, as action-driven productions generally do. It originated with a 1997 story (dubiously titled "A Farewell to Arms") by John Carlin in Wired magazine about the potential for a cataclysmic, nation-crippling "information war," which mutated and stalled, picking up new writers and equally doubtful names ("WW3.com," "Die Hard 4.0"). Somewhere along the development line, the real world intruded, which is why the original idea about an information war now includes a plausible-sounding or at least not entirely outlandish hook to Sept. 11 — hence, the creepiness.

In most Hollywood action movies, references to Sept. 11 as well as to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are often tacked on or displaced, used for decorative flag-waving or scenes of torture. "Live Free or Die Hard" tries to engage the real world more directly than most studio-made fantasies, with a logic-defying plot involving a disgruntled government security expert. That would be Thomas Gabriel, who seems partly inspired by the counterterrorism expert Richard A. Clarke and partly informed by Bill Gates and is wholly played by the pretty Timothy Olyphant, dressed in black and wearing Maggie Q on his arm. Mr. Olyphant has many charms, but annihilating menace is not one of them. Mr. Willis nonetheless keeps any incredulity in check along with his sneer.

Despite its jaw-jutting title, with its evocation of revolutionary America and radical individualism, "Live Free or Die Hard" keeps a tighter rein on McClane, dialing down his man-against-the-world attitude to a low hum. He's still more or less alone, at least existentially, though, as per the action playbook, he quickly picks up a sidekick and audience surrogate in the hacker impersonated by Justin Long (flicking between annoyance and amusement).

But McClane is also unequivocally playing for team America, helping the F.B.I. and its no-nonsense, supremely capable deputy director, Bowman (Cliff Curtis), who runs the sillily named cyber division with blinking monitors and scurrying minions. Heroic in deed and in acquaintance, Bowman knows to side with McClane, saving his contemptuous looks for the guy from Homeland Security.

Nothing on Len Wiseman's résumé — he previously directed the two "Underworld" flicks, wherein the Goth kids really are vampires — suggests that he could wrangle both Mr. Willis and this new film's nerve-jangling action to such satisfying effect. At least on the second count he has received terrific help from a sprawling cast of stuntmen and -women (and the stunt coordinator Brad Martin), who do a great deal to advance the film's old-school mayhem. The use of Parkour during several fight scenes is particularly tasty, proving that when cinematic push comes to shove, the French, who originated this ultra-cool rough-and-tumble, which finds performers bouncing like balls from wall to wall, rooftop to rooftop and many hair-raising points in between, are definitely in the coalition of the willing.

"Live Free or Die Hard" is rated PG-13. (Parents strongly cautioned.) Extremely brutal violence and mild obscenities.

LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD

Opens today nationwide.

Directed by Len Wiseman; written by Mark Bomback, based on a story by Mr. Bomback and David Marconi; director of photography, Simon Duggan; edited by Nicolas de Toth; music by Marco Beltrami; production designer, Patrick Tatopoulos; stunt coordinator, Brad Martin; produced by Michael Fottrell; released by 20th Century Fox. Running time: 130 minutes.

WITH: Bruce Willis (John McClane), Timothy Olyphant (Thomas Gabriel), Justin Long (Matt Farrell), Cliff Curtis (Bowman), Maggie Q (Mai) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Lucy McClane).

Because of a transmission error, a film review yesterday about “Live Free or Die Hard” misstated the critic’s description of the plot. It should have been described as “logic-defying,” not “logic-defined.”

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Live free or die hard, common sense media reviewers.

First non-R Die Hard still a big blowout.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Messages about patriotic duty and helping the vuln

NYC detective John McClane operates outside the la

Lots: Explosions, falls out windows, fireballs, ca

Reference to Mai's "sexy voice" Lucy makes out wit

Plenty of colorful "action" language, including on

Mention of Arby's.

Injured Matt says he's been dosed with morphine, s

Positive Messages

Messages about patriotic duty and helping the vulnerable run throughout, along with the idea that government (and police) are inept and slow moving and that vigilantism is the most effective way to solve major problems.

Positive Role Models

NYC detective John McClane operates outside the law to get his job done: He blows things up, breaks into buildings, steals cars, and doesn't read villains their rights -- but theoretically it's all for a good cause, to save the world from "virtual terrorism."

Violence & Scariness

Lots: Explosions, falls out windows, fireballs, car crashes and flips, shoot-outs, throttling, kicks, punches, slaps, helicopter door-gunning, Harrier jet missile-firing, non-lethal shots into legs and feet, twisting of gun into a wound. Fights include a thug grabbing John through his car window, then being dragged along and smashed into a dumpster. There's a video image of the exploding U.S. capitol (revealed to be fake); a car flies through the air into a helicopter (big explosion, from which one thug escapes by falling hard to the ground); slamming fight between John and Mai (includes tosses into walls, a car crashing down an elevator shaft, a body falling down the shaft, the car exploding in the shaft); villain shoots his own hackers; battle between John in semi and Harrier jet leaves tuck demolished and elevated highway collapsing -- repeatedly; bloody bodies in close-ups.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Reference to Mai's "sexy voice" Lucy makes out with boy (she pushes away his hand on her bra); Mai shows cleavage a couple of times; Mai and Gabriel kiss deeply; Matt slows Gabriel's computer downloads by setting loose a pop-up attack ("Sexy Singles," "Cheap Viagra," etc.).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Plenty of colorful "action" language, including one almost-use of John McClane's signature phrase ("Yippee-ki-yay, motherf...," covered over by a sound effect); repeated uses of "jerk-off," "dick," "screw up," "damn," "s--t," "ass," "a--hole," "bitch," "hell," and "son of a bitch."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Injured Matt says he's been dosed with morphine, so his pain has subsided.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that although this fourth Die Hard movie is the first in the franchise not to get an R rating (which may be more about the culture than the movie itself), it's still full of frequent, noisy, painful-looking violence that yields plenty of injuries and dead bodies. Expect bloody shootings, falls, body smashes, strangulations, punches, slaps, kicks, spectacular car crashes and flips, huge explosions, and ferocious hand-to-hand fights. A boy puts his hand on Lucy's bra during a make-out session; there are also brief cleavage shots and an extended kiss. Language includes an unfinished exclamation of "Yippee-ki-yay, motherf---er," as well as multiple uses of "s--t," "hell," and "ass." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (11)
Kids say (41)

Based on 11 parent reviews

Surprisingly good, Justin Long holds his own.

Only pg-13 rated installment is still lots of fun, what's the story.

John McClane ( Bruce Willis ) is back in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD, full of the retro rightness and righteousness that he's embodied throughout the action-packed series. This installment pits John against a digital world. Nemesis Thomas Gabriel ( Timothy Olyphant ) is a former Department of Defense superstar upset that his warnings about a vulnerable security system and imminent "information war" were ignored. Now he's seeking vengeance by shutting down all computers, aided by some very athletic associates, his girlfriend Mai (Maggie Q), and the Parkour-inspired Rand (Cyril Raffaelli). So he can keep up, John is supplied with a hacker sidekick, Matt ( Justin Long ), whom Gabriel wants dead. Assigned to deliver Matt to Washington, D.C., John is soon communicating with FBI agent Bowman (Cliff Curtis). When the feds (along with NSA and Homeland Security) can't solve the crisis, John and Matt take up the slack. And John's answers tend to be violent: explosions, collapsing highways, "killing" a helicopter with a car. Throughout the movie, John displays his trademark crudeness (calling Mai nasty names), unflappable tough guy image, as well as his compassion and determination. Though he's committed, as always, to his "job" (still NYPD) as a means to individual identity, John doesn't claim a national or even an ideological affiliation.

Is It Any Good?

More than the second and third movies, the diverting Live Free grapples with John's cowboy machismo. Reviving an action-movie style that's quite opposed to recent technological acrobatics, comic book antics, or wire-work martial arts, Live Free or Die Hard presents John as a manly man who spends most of the movie filthy and bloodied, less desperate and sentimental than 24 's Jack Bauer, but equally adept at handling "terrorists," fake or real. He's also great fun to watch, going all scrunchy-faced during amazing stunts.

Live Free gestures toward a flag-waving U.S. patriotism, set as it is around Independence Day. But it's focused on John's particular renegade-ness. Even if he shares Gabriel's irritation at slow-thinking government officials, John is absolutely heroic -- and always right.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about why we love action movies. What is it about filmgoers that we like to see things blow up ?

Talk with your kids about the difference between real life and fantasy -- even teens (especially if they're driving). Point out that consequences exist -- even if it makes you feel humorless.

Movie Details

In theaters : June 27, 2007
On DVD or streaming : November 20, 2007
Cast : Bruce Willis , Justin Long , Timothy Olyphant
Director : Len Wiseman
Studio : Twentieth Century Fox
Genre : Action/Adventure
Run time : 129 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : intense sequences of violence and acintense sequences of violence and action, language and a brief sexual situation.
Last updated : January 21, 2024

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Live Free or Die Hard Reviews

Even though NYPD Det. John McClane doesn’t always feel like the McClane we know and love, director Len Wiseman does such a wonderful job orchestrating bravado shootouts, fights, and chases that our most basic entertainment needs are met.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 6, 2024

Audiences looking for heartfelt drama and a realistic plot are certainly courting the wrong movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 26, 2020

This worthy addition to the Die Hard franchise sticks to a refreshingly old-fashioned (but no less effective) action formula throughout.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 11, 2020

But ultimately it's [Bruce] Willis who makes this loopy action movie so endearing...Nobody dies it better.

Full Review | Feb 6, 2018

It's an over-the-top spectacle of action violence, and I loved it.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 28, 2014

Provided you don't put too much thought into it and just enjoy the ride, you'll have a blast.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Feb 12, 2013

Ultimately, a passable new Die Hard movie is more than anyone of us ever really expected, and that in itself is worth a jolly old Yippee-Ki-Ay.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 3, 2012

Brainless? Sure. Entertaining? Yup.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 14, 2012

Though it's mostly entertaining (if overlong), there is a sense that the whole thing has become somewhat rote.

Full Review | Jun 18, 2012

Len Wiseman handles many of the set-pieces with flair and tension.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Live Free or Die Hard needs a sense of joy, a sense that despite the harrowing nature of the situation, there is something entertaining - even to the participants - about the absurdity of the situation ... it doesn't have that.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5/10 | Mar 29, 2011

Fred Flinstone in the land of the Jetsons

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 17, 2010

Pulled off with just the right spatial élan

Full Review | Aug 27, 2009

The Die Hard series was about as animated as Rocky's face until director Len Wiseman restored it to its kinetic essence...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 23, 2009

Live Free or Die Hard is an over-the-top, fun rampage.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.0/5 | Feb 2, 2009

It's not remotely plausible, but with Willis' McClane leaping onto the tailfins of passing jet fighters and bringing down helicopters by launching police cars at them, there's enough stuff blowing up that action fans won't mind much.

Full Review | Oct 18, 2008

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 18, 2008

Live Free or Die Hard is as close as we are going to get to reliving the good old action films of the '80s.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 23, 2008

I was actually nervous with all the gunfire and near misses. But then it kept happening over and over again. So instead of being involved, I studied the action sequences.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Mar 3, 2008

As more and more movies rely on massive CGI enhancement and Hong Kong choreographed wire-rigged fights, Die Hard revels in good, old-fashioned fist fights and real, immaculately executed stunts.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Feb 28, 2008

Dying Hard: Matt Revisits LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD

Live Free or Die Hard review. Matt reviews Len Wiseman's Live Free or Die Hard starring Bruce Willis, Justin Long, and Timothy Olyphant.

[ With A Good Day to Die Hard set to open this Thursday, we'll be taking a look back at the first four Die Hard movies. These reviews will contain spoilers since the movies have been out for years. Click on the respective links for my look back at Die Hard , Die Hard 2 , and Die Hard with a Vengeance .]

The longest gap between Die Hard movies was the 12 years between Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) and Live Free or Die Hard (2007). In the interim, the world had drastically changed most notably because of 9/11 and developments in communications technology. No longer could terrorism be casually mentioned as a guise for a heist, and John McClane ( Bruce Willis ) wouldn't be running around looking for the nearest pay phone. As Live Free villain Thomas Gabriel ( Timothy Olyphant ) says to McClane, "You're a Timex watch in a digital age." It's a crappy metaphor since Timex has been making digital watches for decades, but the sentiment is noteworthy: Is John McClane a relic? The question doesn't really matter since Live Free or Die Hard barely qualifies as a Die Hard film, especially with Willis' bored performance and the PG-13 rating. Instead, Live Free is best explored as the way a Die Hard movie would approach terrorism if a Die Hard film was directed by a hand-tied fan who didn't understand the essence of the franchise.

As we saw in Die Hard with a Vengeance , it doesn't hurt to give McClane a partner, but the personality of that partner is crucial. Live Free or Die Hard has McClane carting around hacker Matt Farrell ( Justin Long ), whose life is in danger after he unintentionally contributed a world-destroying code to Gabriel. Gabriel's plan is to have a "fire sale" where he controls communications, utilities, transportation, and pretty much anything else he wants because computers are magic. As the world starts crumbling around them, McClane and a reluctant Farrell decide to go after Gabriel, and save the day. However, Gabriel gets an ace-in-the-hole by kidnapping McClane's daughter/plot-device, Lucy ( Mary Elizabeth Winstead ).

Live Free or Die Hard has a number of key misunderstandings when it comes to what John McClane does. The top of the list is "John McClane Does Not Save the World". Part of the character's charm is that he's "The Little Guy". He gets put in a tight situation and has to scrap his way out of it. Even when he seeks out the problem like in Die Hard 2 , he's still stuck in the confines of the airport, and he's out to save hostages. Even Die Hard with a Vengeance doesn't have him saving all of New York City. When the canvas gets too large, McClane doesn't matter because he's clearly not the only one who can save the day. He's trapped in Die Hard , Stuart is watching the airport in Die Hard 2 , and he's selected by Simon in Die Hard with a Vengeance . In Live Free or Die Hard , it looks like every other law enforcement person in the country decided to say "Fuck it. It's the Fourth of July weekend, and my grill isn't computer-operated. Who wants hot dogs?"

The large canvas also lessens the urgency of the picture since McClane and Farrell are mostly on a road trip, so the film is taking place over the course of days rather than hours. Even when the first three Die Hard movies aren't having an action scene, there's always intensity. McClane has to keep running or driving fast. Live Free or Die Hard involves leisurely trips through the countryside where McClane explains that he feels obligated to do the right thing even though his heroism has pushed his family away. He's picked his life back up from With a Vengeance , so it's tough to believe his family would be driven away by heroism.

It also can't be his personality since the intensity has all but died away. Willis seems mostly disinterested in reprising his famous role. It takes about 45 minutes for McClane to start feeling like McClane again as he survives a brutal action scene, laughs in the face of death, and starts talking to himself. Then Farrell interrupts by saying how McClane should probably go to the hospital, but McClane shrugs it off so they can keep pursuing Gabriel. Willis occasionally comes back to life, but this a far more subdued McClane, which isn't really McClane at all.

The quieter McClane puts all of the comic relief on Long's shoulder when usually Willis would be the one doing the quips. But director Len Wiseman doesn't seem to see Live Free or Die Hard as John McClane's movie as much as it's about a fan's perception of John McClane. McClane has taken on the status of an idol in the popular culture, and Live Free wants us to identify with the worshiper, Farrell. We get to hang out with John McClane! Isn't that cool? Not really. We don't want to be the guy who gets to hang out with John McClane. We want to be John McClane. The fanboyism deepens when Kevin Smith comes along as mega-hacker "Warlock". Aside from playing into the total cliché of computer nerds all live in their mother's basement, we're not watching a character, but a nerd who won a role in a movie.

In addition to not really putting the focus on McClane, Wiseman doesn't have much of a villain in Gabriel simply because Gabriel is working from mixed motives. The dichotomy of a tech-savvy villain against the old-school McClane would work except we get it non-stop from McClane's relationship with the tech-savvy Farrell. Therefore, Gabriel has nothing left except being torn between being a terrorist and being a crook. The franchise is at a crossroads, Live Free or Die Hard wants to take both paths, and it ends up going nowhere even though Olyphant does his best to bring some life to his muddled character.

There are no terrorists in the first three Die Hard movies. There are thieves and kidnappers posing as or behaving like terrorists, but there's no ideology. However, their actions and what they provide as entertainment would be highly-questionable in a post-9/11 world. In Die Hard , a giant explosion in a tower is referred to as "property damage". In Die Hard 2 , an airport is taken over, and the bad guy crashes a plane to prove a point. In Die Hard with a Vengeance , bombs go off throughout New York City. The curious thing about With a Vengeance is that there had been a foreign attack on U.S. soil by that point, and it happened in NYC. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was meant to bring down the tower, but it only managed to kill six people although it injured thousands of others. But when it's brought up in With a Vengeance , Detective Walsh tells Simon, "You know what a mess that was." No character in a 2003 movie could have gotten away with calling 9/11 "a mess."

Terrorism and government incompetence were very real in 2007. As Farrell tells McClane, "It took FEMA five days to get water to the Superdome." So government isn't going to save us from the world's greatest hacker/thief/pseudo-terrorist. You can feel the hesitance of Wiseman and screenwriter Mark Bomback to make the villain a true terrorist, but they also want to make a real Die Hard movie, so the bad guy has to be in it for the money. Live Free wants to have it both ways, and it leaves Gabriel feeling like a villain in search of a motive.

Even though I don't think he's a particularly good director, I feel some sympathy for Wiseman because you can see that he lacks the freedom to make a true Die Hard movie, but he's still partially to blame for contradicting his own film's values. There's nothing he could have done about a studio mandate for a PG-13 movie. People are killed in bloodless shootouts, and the word "fuck" isn't allowed even though it's part of McClane's signature catchphrase. But the PG-13 doesn't prevent Wiseman from harkening to the old-school values of his protagonist. Rather than rely mostly on practical effects and stunt work, Wiseman throws digital cars at McClane and has him jumping off of fighter jets. The parkour henchman would be a nice flourish if other action films hadn't already been doing it. There's also the ridiculous fight against Mai Linh ( Maggie Q ) who gets rammed by a car three times before she dies by plummeting down an elevator shaft. Remember when McClane dispatched a henchman by falling down a flight of stairs?

More infuriating is the final confrontation with Gabriel makes the helicopter takedown in With a Vengeance look like a masterful resolution. First, Gabriel says McClane's tombstone will read, "Always in the wrong place at the wrong time," even though that hasn't been McClane's relationship to Gabriel. It's McClane's life in the first two Die Hard movies, so that's the writer talking and not the character. Furthermore, Gabriel holds McClane hostage in the dumbest way possible: rather than putting the gun to McClane's head or back, Gabriel points the gun into McClane's chest, which means he's also pointing the gun at himself. No one has held a hostage like this or will ever hold a hostage like this. And then McClane sacrifices himself with a trademark line smothered by the censors as we hear, "Yippie-ki-yay, mother-"*gunshot*.

For all of its many, many flaws, I don't hate Live Free or Die Hard as much as I'm simply bored by it. My lack of hatred comes from the fact that Wiseman feels like a fan who's doing his best to make what he thinks is a Die Hard movie. Sadly, he lacks the talent and the resources to make that vision come to life. It's a film of sad ironies and missed opportunities, but it's essential in illustrating the Die Hard franchise because it shows what not to do. There's value in Live Free or Die Hard . It's just not the value the movie would like to have.

[Tonight: My review of A Good Day to Die Hard ]

Live Free or Die Hard (United States, 2007)

After twelve years haunting the shelves of video stores, John McClane (Bruce Willis) has been exhumed. The indefatigable hero of three Die Hard films during the 1980s and 1990s appeared to have reached his "sell by" expiration date with the lackluster Die Hard with a Vengeance , but Fox decided there was still room for the old school cop in the digital age. So John McClane is back - sort of. For, although this guy looks like McClane, sounds like McClane, cracks wise like McClane, says "Yippee kiyay" like McClane, and gets bloody like McClane, he doesn't always seem like McClane. Instead of an everyday guy getting the crap kicked out of him as he soldiers on to save his family, this guy is a superhero without the costume. If we, as the movie-going public, weren't so obsessed with familiar faces, there would be no Live Free or Die Hard . Take away Bruce Willis and this is straight-to-video material.

The filmmakers fixed one mistake of Die Hard with a Vengeance , but left two in play. This time, John is again fighting for a loved one, although now it's daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) instead of wife Holly, whose only appearance in this movie is via a still photograph. Unfortunately, the film forgets that the Die Hard formula works best in confined spaces, and has John zipping all across the East Coast, with stops in Camden (New Jersey), Baltimore, Washington D.C., and West Virginia. Worse, the lone wolf has been saddled with a partner. If it didn't work when the sidekick was Samuel L. Jackson, how's it going to work when that guy is Justin Long, the dweeb forever known as Mac from the Apple TV ads?

The story goes something like this: a cyberterrorist, Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant), is about to unleash Armageddon on the United States. As in all Die Hard movies, his motives are purely financial (only William Sadler in Die Hard 2 had a noble cause). He has a sexy henchwoman, Mai Lihn (Maggie Q), whose leg kicks are high enough to earn her an instant spot with the Rockettes. Meanwhile, our hero is at Rutgers, upsetting his daughter by interfering with her date and threatening to do nasty things to her would-be boyfriend if he rounds first base. That's when John gets the call - head to Camden to pick up hacker Matt Farrell (Justin Long) and bring him to D.C. for questioning. Unfortunately, John's not the only one who wants Matt. Gabriel wants him in little pieces - he knows too much. John arrives just in time to get involved in shootouts, car chases, and really big explosions. Eventually, when Gabriel gets tired of having an annoying New York City cop systematically whittle down his fighting force, he decides to even the score by kidnapping Lucy.

Director Len Wiseman at times forgets that he's directing a Die Hard movie, not another Underworld installment. Color desaturation might work well with vampires and werewolves, but it's not a great enhancement to McClane's world. Also, while the action sequences are assembled with workmanlike efficiency, they skate past preposterousness into the realm of outright silliness. I'll buy John jumping off the roof of an exploding building with a fire hose as a tether, but playing chicken in an 18-wheeler with a fighter plane while double-decker highways pancake all around him? Yippee kiyay, indeed.

The character of Matt Farrell is a major annoyance, and more than one audience member will wish that Gabriel would hit the mark and leave John on his own. Long isn't right for the part - he's too closely associated with the TV commercials (and, in an instance of "clever" product placement, the computer Farrell uses is a Mac) - but the writers exacerbate the situation by making him an irritating whiner. John may be a fly in the ointment, but Farrell is an albatross around the fly's neck. As the head villain, Timothy Olyphant isn't the best bad guy in the Die Hard series (hands down, that's Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber). In fact, he's not even the best bad guy in this film. That would be Maggie Q, whose role as a henchwoman ensures she won't be around for the finale. Then there's Kevin Smith. What's he doing here anyway, besides sticking out like a sore thumb? There is one bit of casting the movie got right - Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who had the lead in Final Destination 3 , is great as Lucy. In my dream version of Live Free or Die Hard , she would have teamed up with Dad and things would have gotten a lot more interesting.

In some ways, Live Free or Die Hard is the perfect summer movies: there are lots of explosions, the action verges on maniacal, it takes an act of God to kill a character (whether good or bad), and the running length tops two hours. The movie generates some excitement and releases the occasional burst of adrenaline, but at times it feels more like a big-screen episode of 24 than another Die Hard . John's one-liners have become as mechanical as his methods. There are times when the old John peeks out from inside The TerMcClaneter, and we smile, but those moments are too few. Much has also been made about the PG-13 rating, but that's a red herring. This film is as violent as its predecessors, and the profane part of the tag line is still there. In fact, it's a wonder that the MPAA allowed this to pass without an R.

When it comes to pure, turn-off-the-brain action, Live Free or Die Hard delivers and it's at least a little less burdensome in doing so than any of the summer of 2007's other to-date blockbusters. While it would be nice to trumpet that John McClane has returned in triumph, that would be a lie. Twelve years is a long time between sequels and, while it can be said that absence makes the heart grow fonder, this length of absence encourages forgetfulness. Bringing back John after all those years might have made sense if the script was great, but this is pyrotechnics 101 with a side order of computer-geek-speak. Strangely enough, Live Free or Die Hard may work better for an audience that doesn't know much about the series is than it will for Die Hard die hards, who will be wondering who that impersonator is and what he did with the real John McClane. The original Die Hard came out of nowhere to blitz the 1988 summer box office. The fourth installment arrives with a weight of expectations that Atlas would have trouble shouldering and, when the dust settles in September, it's unlikely that Live Free or Die Hard will be one of this year's big success stories.

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Movie Review: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

General Disdain
Movie Reviews
6 responses
--> July 2, 2007

Thank God for John McClane. That’s right I said it. Where would our great country be, if John McClane was not there to save it time and again? I’ll tell you where — right in the shitter. In “Die Hard,” he outwitted an international thief holding people in the Nakatomi Plaza hostage. In “Die Hard 2,” he outwits a bunch of terrorists threatening our airways. Then, in “Die Hard: With a Vengeance,” he outwits another international thief hell bent on blowing up New York. Like I said, we’d be waist deep in shit if it weren’t for him. So when the latest criminal mastermind arrives on the scene in Live Free or Die Hard who else would you want to protect us, Superman?

Bruce Willis reprises the role of John McClane — the one that made him an action star and household name. He’s much older and even more jaded than before. His wife has left him and his daughter hates him. You can also tell he’s tired of the day to day grind of being a senior detective too. So what better way is there to liven up a doldrums day than to get thrown into dealing with a catastrophic event? You see, the government has just been hit with a Firesale. For those that don’t know what that is (don’t worry, I didn’t know either), it is a 3-pronged attack on the infrastructure of a country. First, you take out transportation; next, disrupt the economy (in this case Wall St.) and lastly take down the major utilities (power and water). Lucky McClane finds himself in the middle of the chaos.

Live Free or Die Hard starts off like its predecessors — McClane having a personal crisis. It’s a good way for us to get reacquainted with him; after all it’s been 12 years since we’ve seen him. Shortly after his spat with his daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, “Death Proof”), he’s told to go pick up Matt Farrell (Justin Long, “ Accepted ”) a computer hacker dork who is wanted by the FBI. The fireworks begin shortly thereafter. That’s because Farrell isn’t only wanted by the feds, he’s a major liability for the person who contracted him. That man Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant, “ Catch and Release ”) wants him dead in a big way. So big in fact, that he’ll destroy everything and anything related to Farrell with all he’s got access to (he’s got a lot). Unfortunately for Gabriel, Farrell is in the care of Mr. McClane and as we all know he is hard as hell to kill.

He survives some ridiculously crazy attempts too. There is a commando filled helicopter, an F-18, car wrecks, some wicked hand-to-hand battles and of course, gunfire galore. Yeah, most of it is unbelievable, but so what — Live Free or Die Hard is so much fun. And it’s not necessarily the action that makes it so enjoyable (although it is a good help), it’s Bruce Willis. He’s likable. He’s bald. He doesn’t possess Brad Pitt looks. He’s so . . . ordinary. Individuals like this are easy to root for. And he portrays the reluctant hero so well. He makes me think that I can perform under immense pressure in the same manner as he does. Plus his witty one liners are cool as shit.

If I had to write a single line to capture what Live Free or Die Hard is, it would be the clichéd, “This movie is an action packed thrill ride.” It really is. It does not have the charisma the original movie had, but it is without a doubt one of the best action movie released in the past few years. Its downfall is it’s been released at the wrong time. Sandwiching it between that little Disney/Pixar flick “ Ratatouille ” and some super hyped robot movie (what’s it called again?) ensures it won’t receive as much fanfare as it deserves. Someone should be flogged like that albino from “The Da Vinci Code” for that because this movie should be seen.

Tagged: daughter , hacker , police , sequel , terrorism

I'm an old, miserable fart set in his ways. Some of the things that bring a smile to my face are (in no particular order): Teenage back acne, the rain on my face, long walks on the beach and redneck women named Francis. Oh yeah, I like to watch and criticize movies.

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'Movie Review: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)' have 6 comments

July 6, 2007 @ 10:45 am Aayush

I just saw this movie..John McClane never seemed to get hurt..jumping out of trucks cars and stuff ! The terrorist guy also jumped outside the chopper when a car hit it ! he simply stood up and walked away ! haha ! amazing !

July 6, 2007 @ 10:54 am Nashtradomus

I can’t help but wonder when you say these lines ..”He’s likable. He’s bald. He doesn’t possess Brad Pitt looks. He’s so . . . ordinary. Individuals like this are easy to root for” that if you are bodering being narcissistic.

And oh by the way, I don’t think anyone should be flogged for releasing this movie in the company of Ratatouille and Transformers. I happen to see Transformers and I feel Die Hard 4.0 could have held off by itself if it had the right “stuff”.

July 6, 2007 @ 12:08 pm General Disdain

I can’t help but wonder when you say these lines ..â€He’s likable. He’s bald. He doesn’t possess Brad Pitt looks. He’s so . . . ordinary. Individuals like this are easy to root forâ€ that if you are bodering being narcissistic.

While I am bald and don’t possess Brad Pitt looks (close though), my observation wasn’t meant to be narcistic. John McClane is an ordinary guy and you ALWAYS cheer for people like that to succeed. I think there is a commandment about it.

July 6, 2007 @ 6:22 pm Nashtradomus

Who cares if John McClane was ordinary or not so ordinary. Either way, it wasn’t about his looks that was of concern, I almost felt you were talking about yourself in-retrospect.

How come no one wants to talk about Maggie Q. I thought the fight scene between her and John McClane was one of the highlights of the movie. Also, i’m truly dissappointed at the makers for making this a PG-13, with no cussing involved.

Yippe Kay Yay Mother F’er!

November 6, 2007 @ 1:35 pm Atomic Popcorn

Not that I recall the 1st movies BUT this movie is a MUST see – Willis is back in rare form for John McClane action.

November 15, 2007 @ 12:04 am Sirius Lee

Bruce Willis still has what it takes to carry a movie. Now that he’s proven that a “has-been” like him can still generate serious moolah at the box office, look for the next installments of “Rambo” and the “Terminator”. God help us all!

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DVD & Streaming

Live Free or Die Hard

Action/Adventure , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

Bruce Willis as John McClane; Justin Long as Matthew Farrell; Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Lucy McClane; Timothy Olyphant as Thomas Gabriel; Maggie Q as Mai Lihn; Cliff Curtis as Bowman; Kevin Smith as Warlock

Home Release Date

Len Wiseman

Distributor

20th Century Fox

Movie Review

It’s been 12 years since Bruce Willis last stepped into the tattered and battered but iconic shoes of New York City cop and reluctant hero John McClane. When duty calls, McClane may complain, but he’s always up to the job of dealing with the baddies no one else seems capable of stopping.

This time around, he’s minding his own business (isn’t he always?) when he gets a call to escort a young computer hacker named Matthew Farrell to Washington, D.C., following an apparent attack on the FBI’s computer system. Simple, right? But the pair doesn’t even make it out of Farrell’s apartment building before they’re assailed by automatic gunfire. Clearly, somebody wants the hacker dude dead.

That somebody is Thomas Gabriel, a brilliant-but-disgruntled former government security expert bent on pulling off what the hacker community calls a “fire sale”: simultaneously shutting down all transit, financial and utility functions across the country. In effect, pulling the plug … on everything. Oh, and while he’s at it, he may as well steal the collective wealth of the entire nation.

A preliminary step requires killing off the freelance hackers who’ve helped him cobble together the code to launch this audacious act of terrorism. Farrell is one of them. Knowing that time is running out to rescue America from a dark future, the old school McClane is forced not only to protect Farrell, but rely on his computer expertise as they race to track down Gabriel and Co.

Positive Elements

He’s cynical and hard-bitten, but John McClane still represents the everyman hero who does the right thing because he’s the only one who can do it. As the stakes escalate, McClane, his daughter (Lucy) and Farrell all risk their lives for one another. After Gabriel captures Lucy and hands her a phone to talk to her dad, for example, the quick-thinking coed tells her dad how many people are in the room. Farrell’s hacker friend Warlock also lends his expertise to help take down Gabriel.

Of course Lucy has a rocky relationship with her father, going so far as to claim her mother’s surname (the McClanes have gotten a divorce) instead of her dad’s. But his exploits earn her approval and admiration, and in the end she’s happy to take his last name again.

Farrell describes a time when he thought it would be cool to see America’s “system” crash, and McClane counters, “It’s not a system, it’s a country, a country full of people who are home, scared.”

Spiritual Elements

Gabriel briefly refers to Islamic extremists when he talks about his motives, saying it’s better for America to suffer at the hands of a home-grown terrorist like him than be attacked by religious fundamentalists from the Middle East. Warlock, who is presented as a reclusive Star Wars fanboy, operates a radio on the frequency 66.6.

Sexual Content

Lucy makes out with a guy in his car. While kissing her, he gropes her clothed chest before she tells him to stop and pulls his hand off. McClane shows up at nearly the same time and tells him, “No means no.” She tells them both, “I’m going to bed … alone.”

Confirming the delivery of hacker code to his female handler over the phone, Farrell comments on her sexy voice and alludes to a sexual interest in her because of it. Later, he downloads a virus onto Gabriel’s computer that begins rapidly opening pop-up windows advertising Viagra, penis size and sex chat.

Gabriel’s right-hand woman, the ruthless Mai Lihn, wears a cleavage-revealing outfit through the entire movie. She and Gabriel, who are romantically connected, kiss. In an (effective) effort to rile Gabriel, McClane describes her as an “Asian hooker b–ch” and a “ninja chick” who’s “smokin’ hot.”

Violent Content

Violence is synonymous with the Die Hard franchise. And the PG-13 rating assigned to this fourth franchise film (the first three were all rated R) doesn’t in any way indicate that it’s significantly tamer:

Shootouts. The opening scene finds Gabriel’s goons trying to kill Farrell. McClane intervenes, and a high-caliber shootout ensues, with McClane’s bullets claiming three victims. As the story progresses, the good and bad guys tangle regularly with guns, with multiple scenes that include unnamed lackeys and unfortunate policemen getting shot here and there. In addition, two characters are shot in the foot. McClane himself is twice on the receiving end of a bullet. Once he intentionally shoots himself to nail another bad guy behind him.

Explosions . Pyrotechnics frequently impact good guys and bad alike—occasionally claiming the lives of those who don’t quite get out of the way fast enough. Irony is the name of the game when two hackers are blown up in their home as one of them plays a violent first-person shooter video game.

Fistfights. When combatants run out of bullets or drop their guns, hand-to-hand fisticuffs result. Suffice it to say virtually every main character gets punishingly pummeled with fists and feet—including both main female characters. Mai is a marital arts expert, and she unleashes ferociously on McClane before he brutally returns the favor, beating her until she appears to be unconscious. A captive Lucy gets slapped by Gabriel.

Falls . McClane and Farrell (along with several of Gabriel’s goons) suffer big falls. Both plunge several stories, getting knocked around by pipes on the way down. A henchman falls out of a helicopter but is saved by landing upon (and crushing) a car top. Likewise, a lot of people find themselves being propelled (by explosions or other people) through walls, shelves, glass windows, etc.

Vehicular mayhem . McClane bounces two thugs clinging to his car off dumpsters in an alley. He launches his car into a helicopter with predictable results; later he does battle with a fighter jet that shoots up his semi and does its best to destroy the freeway around him. Several people get hit by cars, yet they usually manage to end up on top of them instead of getting run over. McClane rams Mai with an SUV, for example, and as she clings to the hood, he drives through at least four or five walls inside a building. A flying, flipping car passes over McClane and Farrell in a tunnel.

While it’s intense and practically nonstop, the violence here is mostly bloodless. Lots of people get shot and killed—or blown up—but the camera rarely lingers. It’s no surprise, however, that McClane gradually becomes caked with blood and grime, some of it oozing from nasty gouges on his bare noggin.

Crude or Profane Language

As it goes with violence, so too it goes with language. Die Hard warriors swear a lot for a PG-13 movie, with the total number of profanities clocking in around 100. The tally includes more than 25 s-words, about 15 abuses of Jesus’ name and close to 20 more of God’s (including 10 pairings with “d–n”). There are also crude anatomical references (“d–k”) and milder vulgarities (“h—,” “a–,” etc.). And McClane refuses to let a softer rating force him to “disappoint” his diehard fans, spitting out his trademark tagline before dispatching Gabriel: “yippee-ki-yay m—–f—er.” (The word trails off slightly as he says it.)

Drug and Alcohol Content

After being shot, Farrell jokes about how good the morphine makes him feel.

Other Negative Elements

McClane grudgingly plays the role of hero, but he doesn’t think much of that particular calling. He tells Farrell, “You know what you get for being a hero? Nothing. You get shot at.” For his part, Farrell harbors antiestablishment beliefs, including the conspiratorial conviction that everything in the mainstream news is manufactured by corporations to incite consumers to buy stuff.

Gabriel uses news footage of presidential speeches from FDR on (including Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, JFK and Nixon) to create a bizarre, creepy montage that tells America, “It is time to strike fear into the heart of the citizenry. … American progress is at an end.”

With Die Hard , what you see is what you get. There’s no subtlety here. It’s mostly explosions, gun fights and John McClane’s one-liners. When Farrell whines, “I honestly don’t think I can handle more people trying to kill me,” for example, McClane quips, “You get used to it.” Laugh-out-loud moments like that are easily the best part of this movie, and they’re what have made McClane’s character so popular since his debut back in 1988. ( Entertainment Weekly recently named the first Die Hard movie the “Greatest Action Movie Ever Made.”) Since then, the villains have gotten more sophisticated, but McClane is still a modern-day cowboy taking care of business the old-fashioned way: by shooting bad guys … or blowing them up.

So if the basic plot and approach of Live Free or Die Hard hasn’t strayed far from its predecessors, what has changed? Only the rating. For the first time, a Die Hard film has crept into the MPAA’s PG-13 zone.

And I do mean crept .

Twenty-first century Hollywood can’t afford to scare off any potential customers—read: younger teen guys—with an unnecessarily restrictive rating, so Twentieth Century Fox angled its way toward a non-R rating here. But don’t be fooled. The violence hasn’t suddenly turned tame. Worse, we’re encouraged to laugh at it. After McClane dispatches Mai (no spoiler warning necessary here: all the bad guys die in Die Hard movies), he cavalierly tells Gabriel that his girlfriend “is at the bottom of an elevator shaft with an SUV crammed up her a–.”

And violence isn’t the only content concern. I’ve officially concluded it’s impossible to get an R rating for quantity of harsh words alone. There may only be one f-word in this film, but 100 or so other profanities mean we never go more than a minute, tops, without hearing some pretty salty language.

John McClane arguably paved the way for popular action characters today, such as Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer on Fox’s 24 . All have their problems. But most display admirable tenacity and inventiveness, not to mention willingness to risk life and limb to protect and save family, friends, neighbors and the world. By spending more time concentrating on those qualities, Live Free or Die Hard ‘s writers could have said yippee-ki-yay (without the expression’s obscene tag) to the harsh language, the indulgent violence and the sexual interjections as they introduced John McClane to a wider—and younger—audience.

Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.

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Live Free or Die Hard Review

Live Free Or Die Hard reminds us why we love John McClane and why sometimes going back to the basics is sometimes a good thing. The movie provides the action and provides the wit that we loved so much from the first three.

Die Hard is considered by many film buffs as the greatest action movie ever made. There is just something about the character of John McClane that attracts movie goers. Is it his spunky attitude or is it the fact that he is known for having really bad days? It's both. There have been action franchises that have run out of steam in the past, but all three Die Hard films were great fun. Usually I'm not a fan of dipping into the well one too many times, but if Batman Begins and Casino Royale were able to re-spark the magic then why not give Die Hard another go?

Live Free Or Die Hard takes an old fashioned cop and throws him out of his element, which leaves room for a supporting character. Justin Long steps in as McClane's frazzled and tech wizard sidekick. Timothy Olyphant plays a cyber terrorist who decides to shutdown the entire nation in order to systematically collect hundreds of millions of bank account numbers in order to show the government that the system can in fact be broken. Now it's up to John McClane and his sidekick Matthew Farrell to save the day.

What follows is high octane action that one expects from a Die Hard movie. An important thing to point out is how director Len Wiseman stayed true to the Die Hard style and kept CGI to a minimum. Die Hard movies were great because they did action using real stunts and real explosions. The one thing I was afraid of was that this new Die Hard would go with the trend and use CGI as a crutch when in fact it used it as a tool. There are plenty of stunts that are real sets and real explosions. A few scenes fallback on CGI, but only because doing them for real just wouldn't work. Bruce Willis also keeps the spunk that is John McClane. You'll laugh at the one-liners and the witty remarks that Willis adds in the tensest situations and of course Justin Long is just great with sarcasm. They make a great on-screen duo. I also think that the humor in the Die Hard series is what makes it such a great action series. It's the fact that the filmmakers realize they are making an action movie; a movie in which nothing could ever happen in real life. Lots of action movies take themselves too seriously and they become laughably bad, but Live Free Or Die Hard keeps that spunk that makes it laughably enjoyable. Don't get me wrong though; there are some amazing action scenes that will make you tense up. This is by no means a comedy. The elevator shaft scene was one that stood out and reminded me of the trailer hanging off the cliff in Spielberg's The Lost World.

Moving onto the score this brings up Marco Beltrami. I can state here that I am not a Marco Beltrami fan. The only score of his that I liked was his score to The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada. I always feel like he never does anything thematic at all and which is why I was worried when he was selected to fill Michael Kamen's shoes. Michael Kamen was the composer of the first three Die Hard films, but sadly he passed away in 2003. He was a greatly respected composer and his work on the first three Die Hards were iconic. Thankfully Marco Beltrami rose to the occasion and did a wonderful tribute with his score to Live Free Or Die Hard. He touches on some themes that Kamen wrote and gives it that Die Hard feel and atmosphere.

Overall this movie was great. I had a great time watching it and felt like it was better than most of the high budget stuff I've seen this summer so far. Sometimes we need to go back to the basics to remind us why we love what we love. The reason why we love action movies is because of Die Hard and it was great fun seeing McClane back in action.

Live Free or Die Hard is out June 20, 2007.

Live Free or Die Hard

I walked into the theater expecting the worst from Live Free or Die Hard . It’s the first in the franchise to be rated a wimpy PG-13 instead of a very Hard R, and it didn’t help that when I walked up to the cinema where it was to be shown that the signs out front proclaimed the screening sponsored by a local easy listening radio station. There’s nothing hard about any of that, nothing hard at all. But this fourth Die Hard movie is a pleasant surprise. Though they’ve taken the annoying tact of truncating the “f” word off the end of John McClane’s trademark catchphrase, otherwise the hard-hitting, beat to a bloody pulp edge that these movies have always had remains. Director Len Wiseman accomplishes that inside a PG-13 rating by taking the film right to the MPAA’s edge. He’s appeased the Fox executives desire to make it teen friendly by shaving inches (blood spatters only 4 inches instead of 11), and still leaves enough room for McClane to punch the shit out of all of that prime demo pandering crap.

Die Hard 4 fits together in much the same way Die Hard 3 did, with maybe a little bit of True Lies mixed in. Instead of being locked in a building or an airport the way he was in 1 and 2 , McClane is sent roving across the countryside with a sidekick. In 3 that sidekick was Samuel L. Jackson . In this one it’s Justin Long as Matt Farrell, a computer hacker in over his head. The country’s computer infrastructure is under attack by high-tech terrorists, and McClane and Farrell end up being our last line of defense through a series of completely bogus, silly plot coincidences which you won’t care about since you’ll be too busy watching McClane fall down an elevator shaft.

The action is faced paced and hard hitting. Wiseman has done a meticulous job of editing the film, staying right with the action and the gore until the last possible second, when it might push the film over the R-rated edge, and then jumping away from it to something else. He does it so skillfully you probably won’t even notice the Hard that’s missing, by the time you walk out of the theater your brain will have automatically filled it all in. However, maybe he should have also edited out most of the movie’s driving scenes. It’s hard to believe when you consider how seamless the rest of the effects work in the movie is, but most of the film’s driving scenes look like something that fell out of 1957. It’s so bad it’s jarring. At times it’s almost laughably obvious that Willis and Long are sitting in a fake car in front of a green screen. You’d think they’d be able to do something that Hollywood has been doing right for decades. I guess they spent their effects budget on helicopters. Given the choice, I’d have gone with exploding whirlybirds too.

Willis is still great as McClane and I’m starting to think this is one character that’s only going to get better as he gets older. By the time Willis is 80, I’d be perfectly happy to see McClane wheeled in to take over for Bruce Campbell ’s Elvis in some sort of nursing-home based Bubba Ho-Tep sequel. The older he gets, the crankier he gets, and the more fun there is to be had. It helps that he has such a good rapport with Justin Long. Long is sometimes hit or miss. He’s good in movies like Galaxy Quest and Idiocracy , but he’s sort of a waste of space in Accepted . In Live Free or Die Hard he’s at his best, and his chemistry with Willis works. Special thanks to the script, which doesn’t turn Long’s character into one of those boring hacker fountains of techno-babble. Instead that role is filled by Kevin Smith, in a cameo as the stereotypical, basement dwelling, computer nerd. Kevin’s a master communicator so he’s great on screen, but the films seems to treat him as if he’s twelve instead of thirty-seven. Something about that’s not right, and it’s no fault of Kevin’s.

If there’s any real criticism to be leveled at Live Free or Die Hard though, it’s that the movie never really shows us anything new. The action is big and fun, but it’s not exactly groundbreaking and for the most part it’s a bunch of riffs on action sequences we’ve seen before either in Die Hard movies or in other, inferior action films. It doesn’t help that the villains and their master plan are kind of a bore. Sure they’ve cooked up an intricate scheme, unfortunately it’s a lot like the one used by Simon Gruber in Die Hard: With a Vengeance except instead of dump trucks these bad guys are doing everything with computers. Dump trucks are a lot more interesting. Because the script is so intent on being hip with modern technology, a good portion of the film’s most evil moments are spent watching bad guys type furiously at computers. Luckily it’s not long before the not so technologically savvy McClane picks up a laptop and uses it to bash someone over the head.

The bottom line here is that Live Free or Die Hard will fit pretty comfortably on a shelf with the rest of the Die Hard movies. If you’re one of those people who thinks that the only good Die Hard movie was the first one, then this isn’t going to change your mind. On the other hand, if you’re like me and you think Die Hard: With a Vengeance was a blast, then you’re going to feel much the same way about this one. McClane is back, and since he doesn’t get to say it properly in the movie I will: Yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers.

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Movie Review: Live Free Or Die Hard

I just got home from the press screening for Live Free or Die Hard (aka Die Hard 4.0, which woulda, coulda and shoulda been the film's official title). With any sequel, everyone immediately asks how it compares to the previous films in the series. There really is no way to review a fourth film in a series on solid ground because you walk into it with hours (in this case six hours) of expectations. We go to a movie like this expecting to relive our cinematic, pop-culture childhood. Unfortunately it's a promise which is almost never fulfilled. And you might be saying, "Why doesn't he cut to the chase" or "just spit it out and tell us that you hated the movie!" But the truth is that I had a GREAT time. The problem is that I feel like I shouldn't have. I now watch movies with a more critical eye. Hey, it's become my job. That said, the stunts and action are non-stop but may-be too over-the-top for some, and the story is filled with gaps of logic. I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't mention these two things. For some of you it might be a deal-breaker, but I have a feeling that most of you are probably like me, and are willing to sit back and enjoy the movie.

Live Free or Die Hard feels less like a Die Hard film than the three films that preceded it. May-be it's because John McClane is no longer fighting terrorists in a skyscraper or chasing to stop a mad bomber from blowing up New York. This time around he must save the United States from a total systematic shutdown which would result in the loss of pretty much everything, and in effect our freedom too. Willis is called to transport known hacker Matt Farrell (Justin Long) to Washington, DC for questioning. But the bad guys, lead by Timothy Olyphant, have other plans.

They intend to kill Farrell, and all the other hackers that unknowingly helped them before the cops can ask questions. Why, we're not sure. All we know is that it is important that the die. This is where the gaps of logic begin to appear. Case in point, the bad guys have secretly broken into each one of the hacker's houses and have installed a remote bomb in their computer. The bomb can be activated remotely, but somehow still requires the hacker to hit a keyboard delete key to detonate. Wouldn't it be far easier to remote detonate? And wouldn't the hackers, who are notoriously privacy freaks notice that their houses were broken into and equipment modified? And why is there a team of five hitmen dispatched to each of the hackers houses? For no other reason but for McClane to kill? And don't get me started on the retarded "movie" computer technology used in this movie. That stuff always offends me.

Anyway, back to my point: there are many holes of logic in this film. The further you get into the story, the bigger the holes get, and the more ridiculous stunts and situations McClane is forced to endure. But this shouldn't be a problem for anyone who is willing to sit back and enjoy themselves. Len Wiseman has made a great popcorn action flick, and I'm really surprised, as I wasn't a fan of the Underworld movies. Willis delivers the scripted bad-ass John McClane one-liners like he never stopped. And Justin Long isn't nearly as annoying as he seems from the commercials. I would actually venture to say that he is perfect in the role as the smart ass sidekick character. And Kevin Smith makes an extended cameo as "The Warlock", a "digital jedi"-like hacker who still lives in his mother's basement. His scenes are a great break from the nonstop action. And the action is non stop. Some of the stuntwork seen in the film's first action sequence outside Farrell's apartment is better than anything I've seen in recent years. And there is a scene involving a elevator shaft which will have you at the edge of your seat.

And yes, John McClane does go one on one with a fighter jet, while rocking a big mac truck on an elevated freeway. At this point in the film the action got so over the top that some of the people I talked to following the screening were turned off. But it's something I knew about going in. It's featured in the trailers, and heck, like I said I just sat back and enjoyed.

I also must applaud the film for allowing no-holds-barred fights between men and woman. In today's politically correct times, it's not often that we see a Woman take a punch in the face. And I'm not applauding on screen woman violence. I'm just saying that Maggie Q played a real bad chick who deserved what she got. Plus, McClane also takes quite a beat-down from Q. But I applaud a Hollywood film for having the guts to show that a villainous woman can get hers too.

There is even a point in the film where the dialogue becomes self referential, and takes a few stabs at the action movie conventions. My biggest disappointment, and correct me if I'm wrong, but they cut out my favorite bit of dialogue which was used in the theatrical trailer. The part when McClane says "I'm gonna go kill this guy and get my daughter. Or go get my daughter and kill this guy. Or kill all of 'em!" I'm pretty sure it was missing from the film, and a few people after the film confirmed my suspicions. But why would they cut that line? It was so bad ass.

My other major complaint is that the bad guys are one-dimensional and boring at best. And that's sad because I consider Timothy Olyphant to be one of the most underused and misused actors of his generation. And Maggie Q's sole purpose is to look hot, kick butt and as I mentioned before, take a beating. Even the secondary good guy characters (ie the government) are lifeless stiff-looking morons who can't seem to figure out what's wrong. But when John McClane is on screen, you really don't care.

Live Free or Die Hard is ridiculous or may-be even ridiculously fun non-stop action movie. But I wonder how John McClane will stand against Michael Bay's Tranformers. And more importantly, will McClane return one more time (this time to presumingly save the world)? I hope so.

/Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Live Free or Die Hard

Review by brian eggert june 27, 2007.

Sequels generally follow the “bigger is better” rule. In a blockbuster franchise, any amazing special effects or stunts from previous films become a minimum standard for filmmakers to outperform. With an action franchise, this process often results in more pyrotechnics since its predecessor(s) probably already developed the central characters, which are summarily overshadowed by the glorious yet meaningless explosions. Such was the case with Die Hard 2: Die Harder . The fourth film in Twentieth Century Fox’s Die Hard franchise, Live Free or Die Hard , could be accused of similar crimes, except it’s so damn entertaining. Even though the usual Die Hard- specific action and attitude have been muted by the production’s unfortunate PG-13 rating, even though NYPD Det. John McClane doesn’t always feel like the McClane we know and love, director Len Wiseman does such a wonderful job orchestrating bravado shootouts, fights, and chases that our most basic entertainment needs are met.

Like its two immediate predecessors, this fourth film was based on a script not originally intended for Die Hard use. WW3.com was originally penned by Enemy of the State screenwriter David Marconi, based on an article in Wired about what would happen if hackers shut down our global network. But where Simon Says became With a Vengeance by successfully incorporating the franchise’s temperament into foreign material, this rewritten screenplay by Mark Bomback, unfortunately, lacks an understanding of John McClane. Not that it needs to follow a terrorist plot-turned-heist to subscribe to what we think of as standard Die Hard material, but Bomback doesn’t incorporate those McClane touches that make this series what it is. Underworld helmer Wiseman lends his action scenes energy, but his players need inspiration. However, not even John McTiernan, director of the first and third entries, could have saved this film from not feeling connected to its predecessors—not without a rewrite reestablishing McClane’s more potent character traits.

Bruce Willis returns, almost twenty years after originating his most iconic role as detective John McClane, the role that made him a star. Characterized by his wise-cracking, cynical, vulnerable human nature, Willis’s McClane has changed little throughout four movies, which is why his character remains dependable, and why, for the most part, this franchise has succeeded creatively. But something’s missing here. Usually in the wrong place at the wrong time, here McClane curiously finds himself on the job, protecting computer hacker Matt Ferrell (played by Apple spokesman Justin Long) from a group of cyber-terrorists. Long provides nerdy but humorous commentary throughout, leaving Willis’ performance rather stale in comparison to the earlier Die Hard films. McClane’s New York accent is all but gone. His penchant for F-bombs has disappeared. There’s no smoking or drinking, no motherfuckers or shitheads. Hell, McClane is even missing his hair.

All three previous films in this franchise were rated R. This one took a safer rating for commercial reasons. Fox, wanting to maintain name-brand recognition and introduce John McClane to a younger audience, set out to make a PG-13-rated sequel. Fans balked at this announcement, and Willis gave his best performance yet during promotional campaigns where he argued the lightened rating wouldn’t change our enjoyment of the film. To be sure, despite the absence of blood, the action doesn’t falter; what we miss are McClane’s potty-mouthed antics. And while one can certainly understand Fox’s desire to expose a younger demographic to the franchise, chances are they would have snuck into R-rated screenings anyway (or been brought along by their parents who still fondly remember the original). The best result possible result: a few extra tickets sold. Meanwhile, die-hard Die Hard fans are left questioning why a franchise would choose to drown out its signature one-liner—“Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker”—with a gunshot.

Given McClane’s traditional foul-mouthed taunting of terrorists via walkie-talkie or telephone, when he finds his daughter has been kidnapped by Gabriel’s gang and not one “fuck” or derivation thereof is uttered, we realize something has changed in McClane. Whatever caused that change is unexplained in the script. Maybe he found religion. Maybe he’s out of change for the swear jar. Whatever the reason, Willis downplays McClane’s energy. Perhaps it can be explained by McClane’s old age or perhaps by Willis’s. Sadly, even with an unrated DVD reincorporating any cut F-words, Live Free or Die Hard would still lack the same McClane-isms as the original and With a Vengeance .

Coherent music might have helped this sequel retain the consistency of the first and third films. Die Hard offered Michael Kamen’s version of “Ode to Joy” throughout; With a Vengeance sustained the Civil War tune “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”—each grants their particular film a musical pulse. Instead, the music here is as inconsequential as Die Hard 2 , which is surprising, since Live Free or Die Hard ’s trailer boasted an electric guitar version of ”Ode to Joy,” recalling both the first Die Hard and Hendrix’s version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” (how I wish that would have been this film’s musical piece throughout). The only constant is Wiseman’s ability to keep the action quotient high and his usual muted-color visual palette.

Right about now, it may sound like I didn’t really care for Live Free or Die Hard , but admittedly, I was entertained. It provides some of the best summer-movie escapism of 2007—a year filled with many disappointments ranging from Spider-Man 3 to the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. This is another disappointment, to be sure, but only in a mild sense that didn’t prevent me from enjoying the humor throughout and the massive action scenes, which involve all sorts of airborne vehicles and colossal explosions, and impressive fisticuffs. The undeniable affability of Willis, even in his hushed performance as McClane, doesn’t hurt either. The fact is, if you change McClane’s name to Bob Johnson and omit the one or two McClane-specific references, you have a solid action movie with amazing special effects and a timely post-9/11 story, just nowhere near the characterization of a Die Hard movie.

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Live Free or Die Hard

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

It’s easy to joke about Bruce Willis, now past fifty, returning for a fourth chapter in the Die Hard series. It’s been a dozen years since the last one. Shouldn’t Willis be winded by now or prepping for AARP meetings? Even his former wife Demi Moore married a younger man. OK, I said the jokes were easy.

Know what? Willis gets the last laugh. Live Free or Die Hard may not be much a movie — it’s a series of increasingly nutty stunts clumsily strung together — but Brucie boy is truly an analog hero in a digital age. The role of no-frills New York police detective John McClane still fits him like a glove and he looks as fit as a guy half his age. What’s your secret, dude?

There’s no secret about the movie. It’s another techno-thriller with Die Hard slapped across the title. The bad guy this time, Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant, a master at smilng menace), is a former government employee determined to shatter the U.S. defense system because the feds wouldn’t listen to him after 9/11. It’s a fire sale, everything goes if it’s run by computer. A big cheer here for Hong Kong action hottie Maggie Q as the villain’s right hand and erotic obsession.

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Anyway, back to the plot. It’s up to McClane to transport a young New Jersey hacker, Matt Farrell (Justin Long from the Mac commercials), to Washington, D.C., since the FBI believes he may have helped the bad guys, even inadvertently. Remember 16 Blocks , the 2006 movie in which cop Willis was assigned to transport criminal Mos Def from jail to a courthouse? Same thing, bigger stakes. You’ll be happy to know that director Len Wiseman ( Underworld ) doesn’t let the fate of America get too much in the way of the surprisingly entertaining byplay between Willis and Long. The hacker is appalled that McClane’s taste in music stopped at Creedence.

Unlike the first two Die Hard flicks, set respectively in an L.A. highrise and a D.C. airport, the fourth chapter repeats the same mistake as the third by painting on a broader canvas and dissipating the claustrophobic tension. But there’s no denying that the stunts are terrific fun. “You killed that helicopter with your car,” enthuses the hacker to McClane. That he does. Seeing isn’t believing. But, hey, who needs realism in a summer popcorn movie? Live Free or Die Hard gets the action job done and you better believe that Bruce is still the man.

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Screen Rant

Live free or die hard (aka die hard 4.0) review.

A fun, (almost) gritty & wild ride with Bruce Willis easily slipping back into his trademark role.

If you're wondering whether or not to see Live Free or Die Hard I suppose you might be asking two questions:

"Is Die Hard 4 good enough to become a member of the 'Die Hard' club?"

"Would it have been better if it were rated R?"

The answer to both questions is: Yes.

Purists (Is there such a thing as a Die Hard purist?) may be disappointed by the trimming required to bring Live Free or Die Hard down to a PG-13 rating, but I'm here to tell you that the movie still works despite that.

Would it have benefited from the additions that would have made it rated R? Most definitely, and that does detract from the Die Hard vibe a little bit - but just a little. An R-rated version would probably have bumped my rating from 4 to 4 1/2, but I'll get to that later.

The film opens with a scene that almost immediately tells us that John McClane is back, and watching Willis portray the character on-screen is almost like putting on an old, favorite leather jacket that you haven't worn in a very long time. Right away he just makes it feel like we're right back in his world once again. It looks like he's back to being a regular old police detective and no, his wife Holly does not appear in the film as they were finally divorced at some point. We do meet his daughter Lucy (played very well by Mary Elizabeth Winstead ), from whom he is estranged.

Someone has hacked into the government agency responsible for monitoring cyber-terrorism and the leader of the agency (played by Cliff Curtis ) wants all known "black hat" computer programmers rounded up immediately for questioning due to the seriousness of the offense. One of these programmers is Matt Farrell (played by Justin Long , who you'll recognize from those Apple commercials). A number of black hatters have been killed and Farrell is on the hit list as well. McClane has been assigned to bring him in to the Feds for questioning, and of course as soon as he arrives at Farrell's apartment, all hell breaks loose and we are catapulted into the movie at full speed.

It turns out that a fellow by the name of Thomas Gabriel (played by Timothy Olyphant ) is the man behind all the computer-related chaos that is wreaking havoc on the infrastructure of the country. Of course the Feds (one of whom makes a brief appearance with the name "Johnson" as a nod to previous films) are shown to be slightly behind the curve, if not completely inept and it's up to our hero and his trusty 20-something demographic attractor to catch the bad guys.

I have to admit that I went into the theater with some trepidation, but hopeful that the movie would turn out to be good. It actually exceeded my expectations, and I found myself being surprised by that as I sat there watching the film. It's almost all there: the humor, the fight scenes, the action sequences that are almost over the top but acceptable within the context of the film (well, except for the sequence with the jet - come on now!). I have to say "almost" because there were moments where you could just "feel" that it should have been a bit rougher in fight scene or shootout and that McClane should have been dropping an F-bomb. I know, that's wierd coming from me, but it just fits the established character. And the way they handled masking the famous "Yippe-kay-yay" line was, I'm sorry... just weak. Just leave the bloody thing out completely if you can't put it in full-on.

What else worked? I thought most of the performances were pretty good: Willis, Winstead, and even Olyphant each did a good job, although Olyphant was a little too "clean", I thought. Except for the action sequence with Willis and the jet (oh, and the car impossibly getting airborne and taking out a helicopter from below ), the rest were pretty much trademark Die Hard bits with the proper balance of suspense and "holy cow!" factor without going too much over the line.

What didn't work? At first having anyone, no matter how slick hack into the cyber-terrorism command center had me rolling my eyes, but thankfully later on they give an explanation that helps make a bit more sense of that. Also, whose idea was it to put Kevin Smith in this movie as a Star Wars /computer geek? Puh-lease, give me a break. The guy's almost 40, and yeah, sure that could be the joke: He's still living in his mother's basement. Ha ha... cough. Pulled me right out of the film. Also although the main villain was a WASP, he employed German henchmen. German bad guys in a Die Hard film... I think that's as much a staple of the series as the Yippi-kay-yay line.

In the end, though Live Free or Die Hard is a worthy addition to the series. If they put an R-rated version on the DVD release I would actually rank it right behind the original in terms of where it fits in with the rest. A lot of fun, we get to know John McClane a little bit better and a great roller-coaster ride that'll leave you feeling like your money was well spent.

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Live Free or Die Hard Parent Guide

In this next installment of the Die Hard franchise, Bruce Willis reprises his role as Detective John McClane. This time the veteran police officer is trying to track down a group of computer-hacking terrorists who have taken control of America's basic infrastructure.

Release date June 26, 2007

Run Time: 130 minutes

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by rod gustafson.

It’s bravado versus brains in this resurrection of a franchise that hasn’t seen a new entry for over a decade. It may also be the MPAA’s movie ratings versus parents in what may be the most violent PG-13 film ever released—a strange anomaly considering the rest of the movies in the Die Hard family were profitable and well positioned in an R-rating category.

Enjoying his time off, hard working cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) is reluctantly begged to come back and save the nation after a terrorist geek squad begins taking control of the country’s electronically networked infrastructure of traffic, utilities, broadcasting and virtually every other aspect of society. But while McClane is able to somehow protect himself from hurtling bullets, cars, and any bad guy imaginable, he’s not so hot with a computer. Thus he unwittingly takes on partner Matt Farrell (Justin Long), a computer networking genius and hacker who is suspected by federal agents as being part of the plot.

Perhaps expecting a reasonably believable situation was a mistake to begin with. This film exists for two reasons—to create a myriad of implausible and unimaginative situations that justify the “good guy” pummeling and shooting every enemy that comes his way, and to prove Bruce Willis is still able to hold his own as the hard working middle-aged hero. All the computer stuff, right down to the flashing lights on walls of equipment that look akin to late 1960s props, is merely bait to engage a new young audience who may not have bought the recently released trio of Die Hard DVDs.

Obviously putting those teens (and even younger viewers) into theater seats was important to the MPAA as well. Unlike other violent PG-13 outings that feature wide views of carnage and avoid one-on-one shootings, Live Free and Die Hard takes no prisoners—instead it blasts them in plain sight. Literally dozens of people are shot on screen with detailed blood. Hand-to-hand combat results in bodies violently tossed against concrete, pipes, and any other stationary object available. It also promotes equal opportunity for genders, with one nasty female character who puts up the biggest fight against McClane, which adds extra justification for her eventual violent demise. Strangulation, burning, torture—it seems this movie has carte blanche to maim in whatever way it wants without facing the US Restricted rating.

As well, the film provides bevy of mild and moderate profanities, and a sexual situation in the opening minutes portrays two young people fondling each other (we see a man’s hand on a woman’s clothed breast).

Artistically, this fourth installment starts with well-paced action but then the rather empty plot catches up with itself. Other than offering a small lesson on the evils of computer hacking, Live free or Die Hard explodes onto the screen, then quickly fizzles and dies fast.

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Rod Gustafson

Live free or die hard rating & content info.

Why is Live Free or Die Hard rated PG-13? Live Free or Die Hard is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for intense sequences of violence and action, language and a brief sexual situation

This intense action thriller contains very high levels of violence for a US rated PG-13 film. Dozens of primary and secondary characters are killed by gunfire, beatings, vehicle accidents and other means. Often, we see brutal beatings and injuries on screen—like a man’s head smashing through a windshield, a person being slammed against a wall, or someone getting shot with blood effects. Some of these physical confrontations involve women, and one female character is portrayed as being nearly invincible until she meets a violent death at the hands of her male opponent (which involves being strangled with a cable and then dropped down an elevator shaft). Frequent profanities include many moderate and mild expletives along with terms of Christian deity. Sexual content is limited to one scene where a couple is seen kissing in a car and the man places his hand on a woman’s clothed breast (an action to which she objects).

Page last updated April 30, 2009

Live Free or Die Hard Parents' Guide

How does this film justify the high level of violence it contains? What other ways of stopping the “bad guy” might have been used? How does having one person responsible for saving the entire country create a more exciting scenario than what would likely happen in reality?

What stereotypes do you see in this film—especially in the areas of government officials and computer experts? What techniques are used to make it seem permissible to portray violence against women?

The most recent home video release of Live Free or Die Hard movie is November 19, 2007. Here are some details…

Live Free or Die Hard comes to DVD in either a single (full screen theatrical cut) or double disc (widescreen, unrated and rated editions). Both versions offer an audio commentary with actor Bruce Willis, director Len Wiseman and editor Nicolas De Toth, the music video Die Hard by Guyz Nite and a behind-the-scenes with the band.

The Live Free or Die Hard Two-Disc Edition also includes Analog Hero in a Digital World (a making-of featurette) , a 23 minute long conversation with actors Bruce Willis and Kevin Smith, theatrical trailers and an excerpt from the Fox Movie Channel Presents Fox Legacy. Both DVD choices provide audio tracks in English (Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1) French (Dolby Digital Surround) and Spanish (Dolby Digital Surround), with subtitles in English, French and Spanish.

Live Free or Die Hard is available in Blu-Ray as well. This format presents the PG-13 rated theatrical version of the film, all of the above mentioned special features, plus D-Box motion sensor capabilities, several high-definition trailers and the high definition BD-Java multi-level strategy game Black Hat Intercept! The disc will be authored in BD-J with AVC (MPEG 4) compression and presented on 50 GB dual-layer disc with English 5.1 DTS HD Lossless Master Audio plus English, French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital Sound.

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