vrijdag 24 mei 2013

Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

Genre : Action
Country : USA

Cast :
Bruce Willis : John McClane
Justin Long : Matt Farell
Timothy Olyphant : Thomas Gabriel

Director :
Len Wiseman

Summary
When someone hacks into the computers at the FBI's Cyber Crime Division; the Director decides to round up all the hackers who could have done this. When he's told that because it's the 4th of July most of their agents are not around so they might have trouble getting people to get the hackers. So he instructs them to get local PD'S to take care of it. And one of the cops they ask is John McClane who is tasked with bringing a hacker named Farrell to the FBI. But as soon as he gets there someone starts shooting at them. McClane manages to get them out but they're still being pursued. And it's just when McClane arrives in Washington that the whole system breaks down and chaos ensues.

My opinion

As excited as I was about the first three parts, so deeply disappointed I was about this weak part in the Die Hard saga. The first three films were great because of the tension, the clever action scenes and the cool hard McClane with his snappy one-liners and dry cynical humor.

The latter is still in this film, but the action is soooooooo exaggerated, I could sigh at the sight of it alone.

The first comment I had, and I've also read on IMDB, was that they were blocking all streets in DC except those streets where the chase would happen. That chase ended in a tunnel (admittedly irresistible scenes) and when the lights were turned off by the bad-guys, I couldn't help thinking: Euh , I would at least put on my lights. Nobody did ...

But the most irritating part for me was the one where McClane is driving a truck over a bridge and being chased by a fighter jet. This was so grotesque, so superhero-ish. This belonged in The Avengers or another over the top superhero movie ... but not in Die Hard.

Bruce Willis = Die Hard. But it's really easy to cast him and then put on the movie poster "Die Hard: blablablablabla ...". Success guaranteed.

Timothy Olyphant plays the would-be-bad-guy. An expressionless face. He still needs to go a long way until he's as crazy as the 3 bad-asses from the first three parts.

Justin Long acted very convincing as the youthful computer nerd who was almost wetting his pants with all that violence around him.