Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (2007) - ***1/2

(NOTE: This is a review of the Unrated Edit)

As much as I enjoyed this movie, I don't really see it as a true DIE HARD sequel.

Among the charms of John McClane for me is that he's an incredibly tough lucky bastard that prevails by the skin of his teeth, making his jumps and bumps incredible not because of said moves, but because we believe in him. Along with the incredible bloody beating he always receives.

He lives in a real world that is only fantastical in that the same man can be at the wrong place, at the wrong time more than once. As I wrote in my DIE HARD review, "we feel his pain."

With Bruce Willis kicked out of a window, falling several stories, and walking it off, to surviving a bout with the fighter plane without a scratch, its not as easy to be consistently amazed by his heroics and badass preseverence.

But damn, this movie did come very close. Those two scenes aside, LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD has the McClane that we all love. Still snappy with his vulgar-laden witty remarks, still a bastard who alienated his family away, and still the man to call if terrorists run amok. Put him on speed dial, and Jack Bauer on hold.

In a way, this is the movie that DIE HARD 2 should have been, without the contrived obstacles. With the latter, another "false" DIE HARD sequel for me, you have a national hero telling the authorities over and over again about the threat, and nobody believing him because it would have ended the picture sooner.

With LIVE FREE, the bureaucrats listen to McClane and don't get in his way, but like Paul Gleason in the first DIE HARD, they're just simply overwhelmed by a better prepared, and better armed enemy. Isn't that a nice breath of fresh air for American action cinema in the epoch of 24?

The biggest surprise though I found with LIVE FREE is the chemistry that Willis had with his co-star Justin Long. The film pretty much keeps the buddy-partner formula from DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE, but instead of the heat stemming from the race tensions between Willis and Jackson, the slight sizzle from LIVE FREE is that Long is from a different generation and from a totally different background compared to Willis.

It's never stated, but perhaps McClane wasn't wild about the kid because while he spent years blowing up baddies, the Mac-mascot was sitting on his lazy ass playing video games.

It's Ass-kicker meets Slacker.

The fact that LIVE FREE was helmed by Leni Wiseman, the hack auteur of the UNDERWORLD pictures, is unbelievable. He shoots the movie at times with that urinated-technicolor cinematography I despise, and yet without the bullcrap, or as much, that I've complained about recent action cinema outside of the Bourne franchise.

I still though have slight problems with his 24-stylized opening credits, that the Lucy McClane subplot lacks any chemistry with Willis to make her reversal regarding her father feel organically honest, and with Timothy Olyphant as the villain.

He lacks the charismatic muster to make his scenes with McClane feel more magical than they are, like Jeremy Irons and Alan Rickman before him. His monotone presence may work for as the lead for HITMAN, but not as the villain for a DIE HARD movie.

Maybe what makes this a surprising triumph for Wiseman is that with his Unrated Edit, LIVE FREE is allowed to act like a true DIE HARD picture sequel should. I felt the theatrical edit suffered from being restrained and limited by the PG-13 rating.

Much-needed F-bombs now fly out of people's mouths and several buckets of blood squirt out, which puts some crucially missed balls back. DIE HARD is R-rated material, and damn proud of it. There's even a gunshot inflicted upon the hero in the (improved) ending that actually feels painful.

On second thought, this is a true DIE HARD sequel after all. Yippee-ki-yay indeed.