Welcome back to the Die Hard retrospective! In this entry we’re going to cover the fourth film in the franchise, Live Free or Die Hard (aka Die Hard 4.0 as it is known internationally). This was actually the first Die Hard movie I saw, and as of right now, it’s the newest entry in the franchise that I’ve watched (of course, that’ll change next week when I finally see A Good Day to Die Hard). After a 12 year absence, audiences thought that Die Hard was a thing of the past – could a fourth Die Hard movie give the franchise a second life? Read on to find out…

Live Free or Die Hard started life as an article called “A Farewell to Arms” in Wired, a theoretical piece on how modern day America’s entire infrastructure could be crippled by cyber terrorists. The article was adapted into a movie called WW3.com and was supposed to be released in the late 90s to capitalize on all the paranoia surrounding computers and the Internet in the new millennium. However, the movie ended up getting delayed and then was shelved all-together following 9/11. There were a couple of attempts to get the movie off the ground again, but it wasn’t until the movie was picked up as a Die Hard sequel that it finally gained traction. The modified script went through quite a few rewrites, with writers such as Doug Richardson (who did Die Hard 2), Mark Bomback, Kevin Smith (celebrity geek who appeared in the film itself) and William Wisher. At the same time, two other Die Hard sequels were being optioned, both written by Ben Trebilcook and both titled Die Hardest (remember this, it’ll be important later), but they were passed in favour of the WW3.com script. Eventually the script was retitled “Live Free or Die Hard” as a play on the state motto of New Hampshire, although it was decided that it should be titled Die Hard 4.0 in international markets since they wouldn’t “get it” (that said, as a Canadian, I didn’t “get” it, but there’s no denying that Live Free or Die Hard is a bad ass title… even if the movie doesn’t take place anywhere near New Hampshire).

The film was directed by Len Wiseman, who at the time was a pretty big name in Hollywood, having directed the very successful Underworld (although he had just come off of the major disappointment, Underworld: Evolution). Of course, now adays Len Wiseman is largely considered to be a reboot of Paul W.S. Anderson, since they are both known for making crappy films and the fact that their love lives are damn-near identical. Bruce Willis makes his return, obviously, although considerably more… bald than in previous Die Hard films. The villain, Thomas Gabriel, was played by perpetual up-and-comer Timothy Olyphant (seriously, outside of TV he just can’t seem to get that major break). Playing the role of McClane’s tag-along/”buddy” in the film is Justin Long as Matt Farrell, a computer hacker tied into the terrist attack crippling America. Probably best known at the time as “The Mac Guy”, which actually helps sell him in the role better. Also making an appearance is Retrospectives favourite Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Lucy McClane. She has a relatively small role (basically little more than a plot device) but it’s actually considered her most famous performance. In any case, she does a good job convincing us she’s the utter bad ass daughter of John McClane, despite the limited screen time. Also worth noting is Maggie Q as Gabriel’s lead henchwoman, Mai Linh, who is pretty kick ass, if robotic.

The film takes place in the aftermath of a cyber attack on the FBI. The director of the FBI decides to track down the top hackers in the country who could have pulled this off, but it is discovered that all but one of them have been systematically murdered. John McClane is sent to pick up the last one, Matt Farrell, but a shootout ensues. McClane is forced to protect Farrell as cyber terrorist Thomas Gabriel launches a “fire sale” attack, crippling American society with coordinated, systematic hacks on key parts of the nation’s infrastructure. Of course, it’s up to John McClane to stop the bad guys and save the day…

Based on the above synopsis, it’s pretty easy to see that Live Free or Die Hard has some pretty big problems. For one thing, John McClane has pretty much been transformed from a vulnerable, realistic man thrown into a bad situtation to a T-800. McClane jumps from speeding cars, jumps from a freaking exploding F-35, jumps from an exploding power plant… okay, he does a lot of jumping, but that’s besides the point. McClane gets run through a gauntlet of death and just walks away from it all with a bit of blood and maybe a minor bullet wound to show for it. It carries on the legacy of With a Vengeance, but then takes it to the next degree of ridiculousness with plenty of unbelievable scenes. McClane himself has lost a lot of his character from previous films as well. While he’s still highly invested in his family, his character has basically been boiled down to “smart ass old guy with a gun”. No longer does McClane run from danger, he drives from Washington DC to West Virginia to find it. McClane doesn’t worry about getting hurt anymore, he’ll actively shoot himself to kill a bad guy. On one hand it makes sense for McClane to be somewhat transformed considering how much crap he’s been through over the years, but Live Free could easily be a stand-alone action movie if they just changed McClane’s name and no one would notice.

The film’s plot should also be mentioned for being pretty ridiculous. Many, many articles have been written about how Live Free is basically the apex of Hollywood treating hackers like basement-dwelling Level 99 wizards. In fact, everything with computers in the film is basically just Hollywood cliche – everyone has a dozen monitors for each computer, laptops capable of magically hacking into US government databases instantly, hacking all of the US television networks simultaneously, sexed-up/impractical futuristic work stations for government security workers and instantly finding Farrell because of software analyzing all the voices on radio broadcasts… It’s pretty clear that very little actual research was put up on screen – well, except for when Gabriel manages to remote access Kevin Smith’s webcam, although at this rate that was probably just a lucky fluke (and yes, your webcam can be used to spy on you… sleep tight).

I’d also be making a mistake if I didn’t mention the MASSIVE controversy which was Live Free or Die Hard‘s PG-13 rating. Hollywood wanted to maximize profits on the film, which was fairly highly-budgeted at $110 million, and so cut out all of the f-bombs to avoid an R-rating (since PG-13 films tend to make more money than R-rated ones). Fans spewed vitrol over this decision, since bad language is considered a hallmark of the series, and the fact that John McClane’s own catchphrase is “yippee-ki-yay motherf–ker”… it’s just not something that you can do in a PG-13 movie. For that matter, Die Hard just isn’t really PG-13 material, although the fact that they managed to easily secure the rating by simply cutting out all instances of “f–k” (simply replacing them with more “minor” swear words which actually accumulate to a level equivalent of the first Die Hard) and removing a tiny bit of CGI blood says more about the MPAA’s standards than anything I suppose (the film easily has R-rating levels of violence fully intact, it’s just not bloody/gory). That said, this review is based on the Unrated version, which restores all of the cut language (maybe around 20 f-bombs) and blood, although the differences are really negligible – if you’re a hardcore fan who froths at the mouth at the thought of a Die Hard movie without at least one f-bomb, or hates any sort of compromise, then the Unrated version should sate your appetite in that department.

I’ve been intentionally front-loading all of the complaining in this review, and that’s because Live Free or Die Hard is a hell of a lot of fun. I know I’m probably going to get a lot of shit for this from Die Hard fans if any bother to read this review, but I really like Live Free or Die Hard. Len Wiseman isn’t a good director by any means, but this is probably the second best thing he’s ever done (really only rivaled by Underworld and surpassed by his coup to marry Kate Beckinsale). While the film is totally ridiculous and over the top, literally every single action scene is just plain kick ass. Seriously, I was listing all of the awesome scenes in this movie  for the review until I realized that I had written down every single action scene to that point. The movie is ridiculous and fun that it puts movies which are supposed to be over-the-top action fests, like RED, to shame (without dipping into parody for that matter too!). There are so many awesome moments throughout the film that it’s hard to pick a true standout moment (although the car killing a helicopter is certainly the most iconic moment from the film). This is in part due to the fact that barely any CGI was used in the film (in fact, nearly everything that looks like CGI was either composited, such as the scene where McClane and Farrell are nearly crushed by a flying car, or used miniatures, such as the F-35 chase). It is also due to Len Wiseman, er, wisely deciding not to shake the shit out of the camera during action sequences. Bourne was becoming very popular at this time, and so studios were jumping on the bandwagon by trying to emulate its shaky-cam style… but they did a horrible job at it, making many movies just plain incomprehensible (see Quantum of Solace and Battle: Los Angeles). There is a tiny bit of shaky cam present in Live Free, but it is not distracting and plays second fiddle to steady, well-shot footage which presents epic action moments to us in all their glory.

Adding to the fun are the assortment of “talented” bad guys who shake up the action at times. The first of these is the random parkour villain (dubbed “Hamster” by McClane) who flips, shoots and does all sorts of crazy shit, which is a joy to watch in spite of its ridiculousness (even if he’s basically a rip-off of the parkour bad guy in Casino Royale). Maggie Q also shakes things up by kicking McClane’s ass with martial arts in a rather entertaining fight sequence which culminates with McClane deciding to fight kung fu with an SUV (although McClane’s misogynist taunting is a bit off-putting, but I suppose it can be justified in the context of the film). Sure, these characters are pretty flat and make the film all that more ridiculous, but at least they’re far more visually interesting that the faceless goons McClane wipes out in the previous two films in the franchise.

And speaking of goons, Thomas Gabriel’s a pretty good villain. Sure a lot of his threat comes from his unrealistic hacking skills, but it makes him a legitimate threat in the film. In any case, Timothy Olyphant’s performance is quite menacing, even if he doesn’t live up to the same level as either of the Gruber brothers (mostly because the script makes Gabriel’s character somewhat boring). Meanwhile, Matt Farrell is the “ordinary guy”, sort of like Zeus Carver was in With a Vengeance. He’s the character the audience relates to, a sarcastic geek who can’t hope to be as badass as John McClane… actually, he basically embodies a modern day version of the whole “every man” aspect that defined the original Die Hard. Live Free would be much weaker (and far less funny) without Farrell and McClane’s dialogue playing off of each other, representing the past vs the present, a criminal vs a policeman, etc. Of course, Farrell himself isn’t just a foil, he actually gets to use his tech savvy to help McClane, who would be utterly lost without his expertise. Farrell sort of represents the bridge between the Die Hard films of the past and this film, since computers have become ubiquitous since then. There are also quite a few in-jokes in the film which also bridge the 12 year gap between this film and the last Die Hard, most of which are quite subtle. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more, but I noticed that there was an FBI agent escorting McClane called “Agent Johnson”, McClane saying that he was afraid of flying until he took some piloting classes and an off-hand comment about “taking it under advisement”. For my money, this is how references to previous films in the franchise should be handled, rather than employing the Predators or Rise of the Planet of the Apes model where they basically pull you out of your seat and go “HEY! DID YOU SEE THAT? THAT WAS A REFERENCE TO ANOTHER MOVIE! AND WE WROTE THE WHOLE PLOT TO ACCOMMODATE IT!” These were very well-done, subtle references which can easily go over your head and make subsequent viewings more enjoyable.

Live Free is a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, it isn’t a proper Die Hard movie at all, but it is a really kick ass action movie. However, if you watched it and would only be satisfied with a movie in the Die Hard mold, then that won’t matter to you. The movie is totally over the top, but it’s consistently and entertainingly over the top (whereas With a Vengeance became over the top halfway through after being relatively grounded in its first hour). The movie’s PG-13, but it’s still quite violent and has a lot of swearing – just no f-bombs in the theatrical version. “Yippee-ki-yay” gets cut off (in the theatrical version), but the moment it happens is easily the best usage of McClane’s catchphrase since the first film. You may not like where the Die Hard series has gone in this film, but this is what Die Hard is now (if my impressions of A Good Day to Die Hard are correct anyway). Hardcore fans seem to hate the movie, but it’s the highest praised film in the franchise since the original.

For my part, I really like Live Free or Die Hard. It doesn’t really fit the Die Hard franchise particularly well, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun and way more consistent than any of the previous sequels (including With a Vengeance, which many fans dub the “only good Die Hard sequel”). If you can get over the fact that it’s a new, different kind of movie with the title of “Die Hard” then I’m sure you’ll be very entertained. If not, then you’re entitled to that opinion, but I can’t say I agree with you or will step down from my own assessment.

7.5/10 (oh yeah, I’m definitely going to be receiving hate mail for that)

Be sure to come back soon for the fifth, and final, part of this retrospective series with A Good Day to Die Hard!

Welcome back to the Die Hard retrospective! In this entry we’re going to cover the third film in the franchise, Die Hard with a Vengeance (which started the annoying trend of the franchises’ sequels shoehorning Die Hard into a phrase for the film’s title)! Die Hard 2 was a rather lazy rehash of a sequel, but the producers seemed keen to not make the same mistake. Could the third entry in the franchise bring back the series’ AAA reputation, “with a vengeance”? Read on to find out…

Production on a sequel to Die Hard 2 stalled a bit after the entire premise became the template for every action movie of the 90s. Die Hard 2 was lucky enough to have the turn-around time to beat out a rival “Die Hard in an airport” movie (although technically it’s really just a canonized “Die Hard in an airport”), but by the time the third movie went into production, the premise had already been significantly mined. How many interesting, confined locations could be used when rip-offs had already had to resort to having terrorists on a bus? Well Fox decided to go back to the old well of unproduced scripts to find one to adapt. One of the early scripts they were interested in was called Troubleshooter, and would have seen McClane fighting terrorists on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. If this sounds like the disastrous Speed 2: Cruise Control… well, that’s because the script was the basis for that movie. The Die Hard producers passed on Troubleshooter after hearing about a similar-sounding film called Under Siege (aka, Steven Seagal’s entire career), but the script would later be picked up as the basis of Speed 2.

Quite a few scripts were optioned, but the one which would become Die Hard with a Vengeance wasn’t even supposed to be a Die Hard movie. A script by Jonathan Hensleigh called Simon Says was originally intended to be the fourth entry in the Lethal Weapon series (it certainly would have been better than the Lethal Weapon 4 that we got anyway…). However, this did not come to pass, and so the script was reworked to fit into the Die Hard mold. That said, there are still obvious parallels between this film and the Lethal Weapon series – in a lot of ways, the film feels more like a Lethal Weapon and less like a traditional Die Hard. The film is also notable for having a heist scheme which was so clever that the FBI investigated Hensleigh to ensure that he wasn’t actually planning on pulling it off (because, y’know, turning your plan into a major motion picture is the perfect way to get away with it).

John McTiernan made his return to the director’s chair, taking the reins back from Renny Harlin. He had just come off of the rather infamous Last Action Hero with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and was looking to get into the studio and audiences’ good graces once more. Of course, Bruce Willis also returned as John McClane, although he is the only member of the original cast to return (aside from a very limited vocal cameo by Bonnie Bedelia… although I can’t even confirm that it’s actually her). Two major new faces were added to the franchise in this entry. The first is Samuel L. Jackson’s Zeus Carver, an electrician who becomes McClane’s unwilling sidekick throughout the film. The second is the film’s villain, Simon Gruber, played by Jeremy Irons. Simon is the brother of Hans Gruber, giving the villain’s motivations a personal vendetta as he matches wits with McClane. There are also a host of minor supporting characters, but they aren’t really worth noting – this film is held up by its major players.

The film opens with a literal bang, as a bomb unexpectedly goes off in the middle of downtown New York. It’s quite a surprising opening and certainly gets the audiences’ interest immediately without cheaply throwing us into the action. Anyway, it turns out that the bomber is threatening to detonate more explosives across the city if John McClane doesn’t obey his wishes. Along the way, McClane accidentally ropes electrician Zeus Carver to come along with him, and the pair are sent on races across the city to defuse bombs before they can detonate. However, McClane gets the sneaking suspicion that there’s more going on here than meets the eye…

As you can probably tell, With a Vengeance throws away the whole confined setting aspect of the series, as the film takes place all across the city of New York. It’s not necessarily a terrible decision, but it certainly makes the film feel extremely different than previous films in the franchise. I’m not sure why, but the film also looks very different than previous Die Hards… maybe it’s the lighting, the film stock or the lack of confined space… if I were a film student I could probably pin-point it, but the filming technique seems vastly different than any other film in the franchise to this point. I should also mention that I’m kind of annoyed that Holly has separated with McClane at the start of the film, but at least this makes McClane down on his luck again.

Anyway, beyond the intangibles, the realism of previous Die Hard movies is absent as well. At times the movie makes Die Hard 2 look totally plausible. Seriously, people crap on Live Free or Die Hard for being over the top, but that really just carried over from some of the ridiculous stuff on display in With a Vengeance. It starts out fairly innocently: McClane drives like a total nut, but somehow manages to avoid getting in an accident or killing anyone, he jumps onto a moving subway car, etc. This sort of thing is certainly straining believably, but it’s not exactly off the rails… no, that comes when McClane surfs a freaking dump truck to safety and then gets shot out of a water main right in front of Zeus (who just so happened to be passing by at the time). It’s such a ridiculous scene that it’s impossible to take the movie seriously beyond that point. It reminds me of a friend who said that he saw a movie called Escape from LA where a guy chases after one of the bad guys by catching a random tidal wave and surfing onto the guy’s vehicle. It’s the sort of scene that just sounds so implausible that you can’t believe it’s real, but it totally is. Anyway, the movie really jumps the shark at that point, culminating with McClane and Zeus surviving jumping from a ship just as it explodes into a giant mushroom cloud… yeah, so much for the grounded action franchise, With a Vengeance basically just moves into typical action movie territory.

Okay, I may be ragging on With a Vengeance for being over the top, but that’s not that big a deal in all honesty. To be fair, the film is a ton of fun. For one thing, it recaptures much of the humour of the first film. The whole situation where McClane is forced to go into Harlem with a racist sign is just a funny situation and shows that Simon Gruber is a troll. There’s also quite a few occasions where random douche bags in New York interact with the main characters, almost always provoking laughs. Of course, the interplay between McClane and Zeus also is a major source of humour – Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson have a lot of chemistry and it shows on-screen.

Also contributing to the fun factor is the script – for most of the runtime, the plot is very tense, the villain is great and the main characters are a lot of fun. The whole “Simon Says game” aspect of the plot is a very clever way to drive the plot forward and keep it engaging, especially when you consider that about a third of the movie boils down to “John and Zeus drive around New York”. Before the “game” can get repetitive, the heist aspect of the story falls into place, and it really is ingenious. Seriously, the master plan of this film more than lives up to Hans’ heist in the original Die Hard. It should also be mentioned that Simon Gruber is a great villain in his own right, basically a “bigger and better” version of Hans (although he’s not quite as memorable). Seeing McClane trying to unravel Simon’s plans is a joy in itself as he kicks quite a bit of ass as can be expected.

That said, while the plot quite fun, it also has some rather gaping holes in it. For one thing, how the hell did Simon manage to get financial backing for his heist? It’s sort of implied that a foreign nation is funding it, but I don’t think the movie bothers to dwell on it. In any case, Simon’s packing some expensive hardware and probably is managing a hundred baddies. There’s just so many intricacies that it’s hard to think that the plan only ever gets messed up when McClane’s involved (eg, they leave briefcase bombs in the open in a busy park, how is it that no random bystanders came along and stole them?). There’s also the fact that everyone’s travelling all across the city in no time at all due to the magic of editing, much like in Die Hard 2.

While I may gripe about plot holes in the film, I’ll be honest – they’re all pretty minor. The major issue with With a Vengeance is that it starts to rapidly lose steam around the 40 minute mark. For one thing, you can tell that the film wasn’t really figured out at this point. The aforementioned scene where Zeus just so happens to come across McClane shooting out of a water main just reeks of slap-dash editing. There’s also the fact that Simon Gruber plants a bomb at the school Zeus’ kids attend. When Zeus discovers this, he says that Gruber was doing that to keep him involved in the game. However, this was clearly just thrown in there to try to justify adding some more tension, because it makes no sense whatsoever. How did Simon know Zeus had kids? Are you telling me he didn’t plant his bombs until after his plans were already being set in motion? How is secretly planting the bomb in Zeus’ kids’ school going to keep him in line? Hell, why does Simon even care if Zeus stays involved (he doesn’t have a vendetta against him after all)? Anyway, it’s contrived and cliched stuff like this which make the final 40 minutes far less compelling than the preceding hour and a half.

Of course, none of that compares to the abysmal ending. It turns out that the original ending wasn’t very well liked – originally, McClane’s life was going to be ruined by Gruber’s antics. As a result, McClane hunted down Gruber to play some Russian roulette… with a rocket launcher. It’s kind of a ridiculous scene, but it wasn’t liked for how it made McClane look un-heroic. As a result, we ended up with the dud of an ending which we have been cursed with: McClane and Zeus (for some reason) travel to Quebec and make a bunch of wisecracks until Simon shoots down their helicopter. Then McClane shoots a power line, destroying Simon’s helicopter. That’s it. Simon dies like a total bitch and the whole plan unravels in about 5 minutes. What a major letdown. There’s also a really awkward and completely random sex scene thrown in there for absolutely no other reason than they could, which doesn’t really help the ending any. Whatever the case though, this is supposed to be the climax of the film, but it’s nowhere near as thrilling as the climax of the previous two movies. Hell, pretty much every action set piece in this movie is better than its ending. It’s just completely half-assed, and it really shows.

Overall, I want to love Die Hard with a Vengeance. For much of the first two acts, it is absolutely the sequel that Die Hard deserves which lives up to its legacy. However, the final 40 minutes just kill it and the ending in particular leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Die Hard 2 may be a worse film overall, but at least it improves in the last half hour and leaves a better impression – With a Vengeance just makes me feel disappointed when all is said in done. Many fans of the franchise cite With a Vengeance as being the only good sequel to Die Hard, but I think they’re being too forgiving – it’s about 2/3rds of a good sequel. It really is a shame that they couldn’t have worked out a proper third act and ending before commencing filming, because there really isn’t all that much holding With a Vengeance back from being a great action movie. As it is, it has to settle with being the film that fumbled it in the third act.

6.5/10

Be sure to come back soon for part four of this retrospective series with Live Free or Die Hard.

Welcome back to the Die Hard retrospective! In this entry we’re going to cover the second entry in the franchise, Die Hard 2 (aka Die Harder). When Die Hard revolutionized the action genre and made a hefty profit, a sequel was an inevitability. Could Fox make lightning strike twice? Read on to find out…

Soon after the success of Die Hard, production on a sequel began. Rather than write an original script, the producers decided once again to borrow from a pre-existing source. This time, the 1987 novel 58 Minutes by Walter Wager was selected, since it had a very Die Hard-esque premise. From what I understand, the novel and film are both fairly similar, with John McClane and a couple other characters being substituted or added in to please fans of the original film. Of course, Bruce Willis returns as John McClane. Bonnie Bedelia, William Atherton and Reginald VelJohnson also reprise their roles. Playing the leader of the terrorists was William Sadler (not a big name to us, although he has shown up in a variety of roles that you’ve probably seen him in, including The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist and Iron Man 3). Most of the rest of the cast are unnotable, although two of the minor terrorists would become known actors later: John Leguizamo (Sid in Ice Age) and Robert Patrick (T-1000 in Terminator 2… in fact, he’s badass enough in his 30 second screen time in this that it’s kind of distracting).

John McTiernan did not return to the director’s chair, going on to do The Hunt For Red October instead. Replacing McTiernan as director was Renny Harlin, who had achieved success with the well-received Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. The name sounded familiar to me, and that’s because Harlin was one of the many people who were brought in to direct Alien 3 – however, Fox passed on all of his ideas rather quickly, offering him Die Hard 2 instead.

Exactly two years after the original film, John McClane’s waiting at Dulles Airport in Washington D.C. for his wife to arrive for Christmas Eve. Coinciding with this is the arrival of extradited South American drug trafficking general, Ramon Esperanza. A team of terrorists, led by rogue US Army colonel, Stuart, seize control of the air traffic control system, effectively holding all the planes in the airspace hostage unless Esperanza is set free. Of course, John McClane isn’t going to let a bunch of pansy-ass terrorists put his wife’s life get in danger. Pretty conventional set-up for a Die Hard movie… of course, that’s because the movie is pretty conventional itself.

Die Hard 2‘s script can be pretty convoluted at times and just doesn’t make a lick of sense when you put thought to it. The script is definitely the biggest issue in Die Hard 2 for a number of reasons. First of all, how can you justify the exact same situation happening to the same guy on the same day of the year twice? The movie tries to lampshade this by having John acknowledge it, but it’s still clear that they don’t bother to chalk it up to anything other than coincidence. Credibility get stretched even further by the fact that Holly and scumbag reporter Thornburg happen to end up on the same flight by mere chance, despite the fact that Thornburg has a court-ordered restraining order against her. Then there’s also the question of how the hell everyone keeps getting into the damn air control tower, although that’s a smaller “JUST BECAUSE!!!” issue in the grand scheme of things…

Then there’s just the fact that the plot isn’t paced very well. The opening scene doesn’t ease you into the plot, it plops you right into John’s shitty day. I almost wonder if the editors cut out a longer opening, because the opening scene just feels so stilted. Die Hard had a good 20 minutes of set up to get you up to speed on the situation and characters. Die Hard 2 has 3 1/2 minutes before the villains show up and start doing dastardly things. The first gunfight is only around 10 minutes in. Yet, in spite of all this, literally the first 30 minutes are incredibly dull to watch. The next hour has moments of interest, but the movie lacks a lot of the tension that the original had in spades. I mean, sure, there’s only 90 minues left til airplanes begin falling from the sky, but we rarely feel the urgency of this fact, in part due to the fact that everyone just sits around until John McClane decides to do something. Seriously, John McClane is apparently the only competent person in the whole airport – he must have run a few marathons over the course of the movie with all the footslogging he does while everyone else shoves their thumbs up their arses. It’s not until the last half hour that the movie finally starts to get legitimately fun, kicking off with a rather surprising (if cliche) twist and ending with an exciting, explosive climax.

Then there’s the fact that the characters in this film just aren’t anywhere near as good as they were in Die Hard. John McClane stands head and shoulders above everyone else. Colonel Stuart’s not a bad villain, but he doesn’t hold a candle to Alan Rickman… plus he really doesn’t get all that much to do anyway. Bonnie Bedelia’s given a leading role in the film, but her contribution is minimal and it makes her role feel like little more than an over-glorified cameo. Then there’s airport security captain Lorenzo, whose only real job is to antagonize McClane incessantly, which gets grating quickly. Whereas the terrorists in Die Hard were all pretty distinguishable, the terrorists in this film all blend together (except for the aforementioned Robert Patrick, although that’s because he had an iconic role later in his career). Other than that, supporting characters such as Sam Colman (played by Sheila McCarthy, who fellow Canadians might recognize from Little Mosque on the Prairie) are basically useless and contribute practically nothing to the plot. The lines they get to spout aren’t that great either – Die Hard had some fantastic one-liners, but nearly every attempt at a one-liner in this film falls flat. For example:

McClane: Hey, Carmine, let me ask you something. What sets off the metal detectors first? The lead in your ass or the shit in your brains?

Umm, what? Does anyone know how that’s supposed to make any sense? I mean sure, it’s kind of insulting, but usually you want your insults to actually make sense…

Oh and I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the incredibly random and awkward scene early in the movie where Colonel Stuart practices martial arts in his hotel room… in the buff. The whole point of the scene is to provide an exposition dump from a news reporter on the hotel TV, but it’s completely distracted by the fact that there’s a naked guy practicing punching people the whole time. If there was ever a movie scene that made me feel like a closeted homosexual, it’d probably be this one. Anyway, this scene also makes me wonder if Die Hard 2 beat Game of Thrones to the punch with the whole “sexposition” thing…

Sure I’ve beat up the plot quite a bit, but there is one legitimately surprising and ballsy moment in the movie when the terrorists decide to bring down one of the circling planes. It’s pretty disturbing to watch the people on board unwittingly head to their deaths while the air traffic controllers are helpless to stop them. The crash itself is pretty spectacular, although the size of the fireball’s probably excessive considering that the plane was “running on fumes”… but whatever, I can let a minor detail like that slide.

Then there’s the campy tone of the film. The original film was a lot of fun, but it tried to have a generally realistic tone. This film seems to play up the campy angle with a bunch of silly moments. For example, when a bad guy goes running away across the tarmac, McClane grabs a kiddy bike and chases after him. Then there’s the above screen grab, where McClane escapes the bad guys by firing an ejector seat just before the plane blows up. Just from the way it’s shot, it comes across as being an extremely silly moment. Everyone has an infinity bandana too, because the number of shots that come out of the characters’ single clips is just ridiculous.

Overall, I’ve been ragging on Die Hard 2 quite a bit, because it really does have a lot of problems and is clearly inferior to the original film. However, it is a fairly fun movie, which exonerates it to a point. That said, it’s basically just a generic, mindless action movie hardly befitting a sequel to one of the greatest action movies of all time.

5/10

Be sure to come back soon for part 3 of this retrospective series with Die Hard with a Vengeance.

Welcome back good readers to the beginning of a new retrospectives series! If you need to get caught up on the last series, then you can read about the Planet of the Apes franchise by clicking on the link. The series that we’re going to be focusing on for the next few weeks is the venerable Die Hard franchise. Since this is the first entry in this retrospective, we’re going to examine the one that started it all: 1988’s Die Hard.

Die Hard had a bit of a convoluted inception. In 1966, Roderick Thorp published a novel called The Detective, which was adapted to film in 1968 starring Frank Sinatra as detective Joseph Leland. Thorp’s novel attempted to pursue a more “adult” outlook on police work, depicting topics such as homosexuality, police politics and moral ambiguity. In 1979, Thorp wrote a sequel titled Nothing Lasts Forever, which saw the retired Leland trying to rescue his daughter from German terrorists who have seized control of the American Klaxon Oil Corporation building. The novel maintained the moral ambiguity and mature politics which had punctuated The Detective, but injected them with a good ol’ dose of ass kicking as well. When work started on adapting Nothing Lasts Forever to film, Frank Sinatra was contractually obligated to be offered the role (despite now being 73 years old). He turned it down, and so the producers attempted to retool the novel as the basis for another story.

After the success of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Commando (the quintessential generic 80’s action movie), the retooled Nothing Lasts Forever was put forth as a potential sequel written by Steven de Souza and Frank Darabont. However, Schwarzenegger was uninterested in reprising his role and so the script was retooled yet again by de Souza, this time as a stand-alone movie called Die Hard. In spite of all the changes it had undergone, much of the details of Thorp’s original novel remain, including a number of the supporting characters’ names and the plot basics, as well as most of the key action sequences. However, by the time Die Hard was underway, most of the politics and moral ambiguity had been excised in favour of a fun actioner (in part because Fox saw the script as the basis of a summer blockbuster).

Many actors were approached to play the film’s lead, John McClane, including Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Don Johnson, Richard Gere, Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds, but they all turned it down. Apparently desperate to find someone to fill the role, Fox signed Bruce Willis for $5 million, a figure which was considered extremely high for a (at the time) low profile actor. Willis only had a single moderately successful film and TV show to his name at the time, and was seen as a comedic actor rather than an action star (oh the irony). Villain Hans Gruber was played by Alan Rickman, his first major film appearance. Also cast was McClane’s wife, Holly, played by Bonnie Bedelia. John McTiernan was brought on to direct, after having just completed Predator with producer Joel Silver. However, the script wasn’t entirely finished when things got underway, with entire scenes being added on after shooting started. Also surprisingly, McClane’s character wasn’t even figured out until half way through shooting, so reshoots of previous scenes had to be done to make him fit coherently. Fox rushing a major blockbuster through production to meet a release date? Never!

Luckily, Die Hard ended up being an extremely badass, financial and critical success of epic proportions. Seriously, who doesn’t like this movie? It’s one of my mother’s favourites, and she’s not exactly the sort who’s into uber-violent action movies. The film follows down on his luck NYPD cop, John McClane, who travels down to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve to try to reconcile with his estranged wife who has taken on an important job in the Nakatomi Corporation. During the Christmas party at Nakatomi Plaza, terrorists led by the evil genius, Hans Gruber, seize control of the building and set about orchestrating an elaborate heist. However, McClane slips away and then begins taking down the terrorists one at a time to try to save his wife and the hostages. If you haven’t seen the movie yet for some reason, suffice to say that the story is thrilling and revolutionary. The film is nothing like the typical 80’s Commando/Rambo-model where a single man marches into a military base and somehow manages to kill an entire private army with his machine gun. Instead, we get a single, desperate, ordinary man, a confined location, a finite number of villains and extremely high stakes which just keep mounting until the explosive climax. McClane spends half the movie in hiding, runs away in nearly every fight he gets in, gets badly wounded and improvises his way through situations. As a result, when McClane does get into a fight or goes on the offensive, it makes the film far more exciting and tense, because we don’t know what’s going to happen.

Bruce Willis must have been a revelation as John McClane – he’s fantastic and it really feels like he is an unhinged every man who is capable of becoming an ass-kicker in a pinch. Alan Rickman is also fantastic as Hans Gruber, and is easily the standout performance in the film. He’s mostly cool and collected in his performance, but there’s a palpable menace as well, especially when he discovers that McClane has stolen the detonators he needs to make his plan work. Of course, Bonnie Bedelia is also a convincing Holly Gennaro, displaying both fear at the situation, but a sense of strength and leadership for the hostages. Even the supporting characters are memorable. Everyone loves (or loves to hate) Al Powell, Argyle, Karl, the FBI agents Johnson and Johnson, Dwayne Robinson and Richard Thornburg. Hell, even each terrorist is given at least a couple lines and some screen time, making their eventual deaths have a bit more resonance than the faceless mooks that get gunned down in your typical action movie. The only annoying character is Ellis, although he’s supposed to be a douche bag, so he gets a pass.

Also contributing to the movie’s success is its great sense of humour. Bruce Willis’ comedic past plays a part here, but there’s a lot of hilarious one-liners and sight gags which go a long way to making Die Hard a hell of a lot of fun. I’ve seen the movie at least a half dozen times now, but there’s still scenes which never fail to make me laugh out loud – the exasperated comment about ordering a pizza and the C4 down the elevator shaft especially…

Of course, the movie isn’t all just fun and games. There is actually quite a bit of social commentary present in the film. There’s the really overt messages about responsibility in news media, overbearing police and state authority interfering with saving lives and the government viewing its citizens as little more than statistics. However, there are less-obvious references which are there for people who want to look a little deeper. For one thing, Nakatomi Plaza itself represents the increasing globalization of industrialization which was occurring at the time of the film’s release. The film is also comments on second-wave feminism, embodied by Holly’s position in the Nakatomi Corporation and the cause of her estrangement from John. The only reason they had become separated was because she wanted to pursue her career, but John didn’t support her moving away to Los Angeles. During the course of the movie, John hates himself for being such an ass and wants to make amends. However, the status quo isn’t entirely rocked – at the conclusion, Holly reinforces that her name is “McClane”, not “Gennaro”, suggesting a level of macho backlash against feminism. That said, the film doesn’t become outright misogynistic or act as an anti-feminist parable, but there does seem to be a certain level of backlash present.

Anyway, there’s not all that much to say about it: Die Hard is an action classic. It revolutionized the genre, created its own sub-genre and started a franchise which continues to this day. If nothing else, it’s a kick-ass film in its own right. There’s a good chance you’ve already seen it, and if you haven’t then I heartily recommend that you do. Yippee ki yay indeed.

9/10

Be sure to come back soon for part 2 of this retrospective series with Die Hard 2: Die Harder!