1. grandpajoe6191

   7

   "Live Free of Die Hard" is strong and crazy with impressive CGI and the good guy-bad guy dialogue. It is one hell of a roller coaster ride.

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2. MatB.

   5

   Stupid movie, with a good action scene or two. Again when a plot point gets hard to solve, computers can do anything

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     0 of 0 users said yes
3. MarkB.

   3

   I don't know about anyone else, but I really, really, really, REALLY miss Bonnie Bedelia. For some reason, fans of the Die Hard franchise don't mention this too often, but her Holly McClane was an essential--even vital--reason why the first two Die Hard flicks worked as well as they did. Not only was New York's finest everyman-turned-supercop's wife a perfect match for him, a tough, feisty, resourceful woman who gave as good as she got (remember how she handled William Atherton's obnoxious, intrusive TV reporter? Ouch!) but she helped make Die Hards 1 and 2 (NOT the Star Wars movie series) the perfect, definitive action-movie illustration of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey: essentially, the first two movies were as much about John's efforts to reunite with his wife as they were about his attempts to save the world. In the series' third installment, Die Hard With a Vengeance, Holly is reduced to an offscreen presence that John spends the whole movie arguing with over pay phones; in the current Live Free or Die Hard, the divorce papers were filed years ago. Of course, if you choose not to accept The Bonnie Situation, there are lots of other reasons why Live Free or Die Hard is not only a crushing disappointment but a true insult to all those who believe (as Entertainment Weekly clearly does) that the 1988 original is the greatest action movie of all time. Die Hard movies decrease in effectiveness in direct proportion to how large a terrain gets covered: the original took place in a large office building; the second entry, which was only slightly less good, was set mostly in an airport; the markedly inferior third installment covered all of New York City, and this one, the absolute weakest, uses the entire Eastern Seaboard as its McClane-vs.-terrorists playing field. Artificial, all-too-obviously computer-generated action sequences (including a couple that look suspiciously like the dreaded rear-projection shots that went out of style right after the seventeenth time Frankie Avalon faked hanging ten in front of footage of a wave, circa 1965) completely sink this one, all but defeating Justin Long's likable screen presence as a computer geek unwillingly recruited by McClane. But the final blow is dealt by Live Free's selling of the franchise's soul in order to get the almighty PG-13 rating. Not EVERYTHING has to be for the kids, and watching the ridiculously sanitized action in this one reminds us of how gutsy (in both senses) the first two were; c'mon, watching a bad guy take an occasional icicle in the eye or get turned into red coleslaw by a fast-moving jet never seriously hurt anyone. The biggest fraud of all--and one that Ralph Nader might consider investigating, if he's finished bollixing up elections--is Live Free's bowdlerization of McClane's legendary "Roy Rogers quote". In the questionable interest of not burning so-called virgin ears, who hear worse on the playground, or on cable TV, it gets muffled in a despicable act of aural hocus-pocus. In the interest of telling it like it is, let me just describe this trick (and this movie) the way the REAL John McClane would've wanted: "Yippie-ki-yay; mother, we've been f.cked!"… Expand

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