So I saw Live Free or Die Hard last night, or Die Hard 4.0 as it is known in international markets. I think they should have called it Multiple Choice: A) Live Free, or B) Die Hard.That was some loco shit – gruesome deaths, helicopters strafing, outrunning fireballs, hanging over great heights, jumping on moving objects, jumping off moving objects, shooting things to make them explode, head butting, speaking ill of the dead, helicopters flying in formation, PG-13 profanity, machine guns, a command center where people explain the plot, a Joint Strike Fighter piloted by the most bloodthirsty maniac in the Air Force, collapsing freeways, parkour, annoying meta references to the first three films, lots of broken glass, elevator shaft fu, and car crashes. Oh, the crashes. There are enough car crashes in Live Free or Die Hard to fill ten normal movies.
Darn it, I kinda liked it.
By the time the movie limps into the third act, it had built up so much momentum and good will that I temporarily suspended critical thinking and just enjoyed the whole F-35 vs Mack truck scene, even if it did deeply offend my intelligence. If you see the movie, you'll know what I mean. By the end of the film you will just be shaking your head and muttering, "No fucking way." And then you'll catch yourself and feel silly for applying logic and reason to this film.
There were a couple of things that bugged me about Live Free or Die Hard. Well, a lot of things, really, but let's just pick a few.
First of all, it's not really a Die Hard movie. I mean, the central idea is there - cop in wrong place, right time foils the plans of a group of sophisticated terrorists who are not what they appear to be - but I felt like this could have been Random Mark Wahlberg Movie instead of the fourth chapter in the franchise. The John McClane in Die Hard felt like a real guy stuck in a shitty situation, but in this one he has transformed into a frickin' OMAC* who bends physics and audience disbelief at will. The American Everyman is long gone.
Strap in, I'm going to bitch about something totally trivial:
There's a scene in Live Free or Die Hard where McClane1000 runs out of bullets so he uses his onboard cyber-targeting system to precisely launch a cop car into a cooperatively motionless helicopter. Big explosion. Hey, I'm not spoiling anything, man, it was in the trailers.
Keep in mind, this movie takes place on the East Coast:
Look in the background. Wow, is there an exact replica of L.A.'s famous Bonaventure Hotel somewhere in D.C.? You know the building because it has been in 1 million and 6 films and TV shows:
Here's the thing: I don't actually recall seeing the Bonaventure in the film. They either cleverly avoided filming the building or they just did a little CGI voodoo on the backgrounds. I'll have to watch more carefully when the movie comes out on DVD. But let's say they did manage to keep the landmark hotel out of frame - why would you include a shot of said hotel in a photo in the official press kit? Newspapers and websites everywhere are running that shot of car + helicopter + Bonaventure Hotel. They couldn't have put some effort into their official press kit photos?
It reminds me of the remake of Dawn of the Dead. Man, I loved the first twenty minutes of that movie. When DoD V 2.0 came out, I remember reading a review and looking at one of the press kit photos of a horde of zombies doing the 100 meter dash. Let me see if I can find the photo I'm looking for...
Ah, here it is:
What's wrong with this picture? Yes, aside from "real zombies don't run," smart-ass.
Well, clearly the make-up people forgot to zombify the guy in the foreground's gut, because you can see a nice pink belly button that doesn't match the rest of zombie guy's body. Do I hold this against the filmmakers? No, but I can hold it against the guys that did publicity for the movie. Did nobody notice that? Nobody? I can't be the only guy in the world who noticed that guy's gut, and I'm just some dude. People actually got paid to select that picture as part of the press package.
Let's move on. There's another scene where the Thankless Expository Actors are flying around in helicopters over the Eastern Seaboard explaining the plot and I swear -and I could be wrong- I swear they are flying over Long Beach, CA. Am I wrong? I frequently am. Can somebody back me up on that?
I get tired of seeing movies half-assedly pass one distinctive location off for another. It's like every film that is shot in Vancouver, B.C.. I love Vancouver, it's one of my favorite cities, but please Hollywood, I beg of you - stop filming movies up there. Movies that are shot in Vancouver look like they were shot in Vancouver, and no place else. Remember Rumble in the Bronx? Filmed in Vancouver. Did anyone for even a moment actually think that was shot in New York City? What about the scene where Jackie Chan is hanging off the speeding hovercraft in "New York" with beautiful snow capped mountains in the background? Please, no more Vancouver movies unless the story actually takes place in Vancouver.Anyway, the whole point of that was I hate it when movies are sloppy about shit. I'm not losing sleep or anything, but it kind of bugs me because I feel like the filmmakers think audiences are too stupid to notice stuff like towering mountains in New York City and non-zombie bellies and the ubiquitous Bonaventure Hotel.
Oh, one last thing. The villain in Live Free or Die Hard looks like Ryan Seacrest. It was distracting. During one of the many tense walkie-talkie exchanges between McClanebot and Bad Guy, I kept expecting the guy to say, "I've got your daughter now, McClane. Seacrest OUT!"So there you are. Not so much a review of the movie but just a lot of random, sloppily organized thoughts that pass as a review - which, considering the source material, is appropriate. Live Free or Die Hard is gloriously messy, fun entertainment. Go check it out, and come back and tell me what you thought of that crazy fucking jet vs semi scene.
Campbell out!
*O.M.A.C. = One Man Army Corps
Well, here's my take on it...
ReplyDeleteLive Free or Die Hard
Whoops, should have been
ReplyDeletehttp://www.flickskinny.com/archives/livefreediehard.html
The problem is that John McTiernan didn't direct it. Len Wiseman did. Len Wiseman is hack. A well-paid hack, but a hack all the same. He has no understanding that continuity and cohesion are actually required to elevate a movie beyond an FX ride. Which is a shame, because his FX works is usually well planned, if not always well executed.
ReplyDeleteSorry. Underworld and its sequel just annoyed me so darn much. So many of my friends loved them, but I couldn't watch them without thinking how it could have been better with just a few sensible tweaks. Every time I see the guy's name, I twitch.
And I'll have you know: the grammatical errors in my previous post also make me twitch.
ReplyDeleteTeach ME not to preview next time.
I think at the end of the movie they should have had M. Night Shyamalan in a cameo as a paramedic who looks at McLane's wounds and says "With all this guy's been through, either he's indestructible or he's already dead and just hasn't realized it."
ReplyDeleteWhen I first saw the adds for this, I said "Bruce Willis is Jack Bauer in True Lies II" and I stand by that, although I did enjoy the film.
Dave,
ReplyDeleteMaybe the use of/failure to cover over L.A.'s Bonaventura hotel is continuity of an extremely meta sort? See, because you started your rant about films not being filmed in places they say they're being filmed, and all I could think about is the first movie I ever noticed that in: Die Hard 2.
See, Die Hard 2 is supposed to take place at Dulles International Airport (IAD, FYI), which is located about 30 minutes from where I grew up. I'm quite familiar with it. Dulles looks nothing like the generic airport used in the movie (actually part LAX, part Stapleton in Denver). For starters, Dulles uses trams to get between terminals, which makes many of the plot points of the movie unreasonable. But more importantly, for 13-year-old me, was the scene where McClaine used a Pacific Bell pay phone.
I'll always remember that scene as the moment when I realized that (i) movies didn't even tell the truth about where they were filmed, and (ii) people were either really easy to fool or really liked to suspend their disbelief.
Maybe McTiernan, who was supposed to film Die Hard 2, wanted to do everything over-the-top that he missed the last time? At least, that's my theory.
We saw the movie at a drive-in last night and it just seemed appropriate. The movie was mindless summer fun! Criticizing its flaws would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
ReplyDeleteNot only did I not recognize the Bonaventure Hotel in the movie or the publicity stills, I'd never even heard of the place until I read this blog entry. So no, I wasn't annoyed by it.
ReplyDeleteThe semi vs. jet thing was a little goofy, but it was also kinda fun in a "even though the premise of this set piece is rather outlandish, it's still more entertaining than the failed aspirations of a hundred Michael Bay films" sort of way.
Any failings the film's continuity had were more than made for by McClaine taunting the villain about killing the Asian hooker girlfriend. In most other action movies, that doesn't happen. Not only doesn't it happen, the scriptwriters don't even consider putting it in for one second.
smallville is filmed in Vancouver...
ReplyDeleteWhat irked me was that part of the plot concerns the bad guys totally fouling up the transportation infrastructure. You know, car crashes at every intersection, traffic at a standstill for miles, the streets basically being turned to parking lots everywhere ... everywhere EXCEPT where a 10 minute helicopter/car chase is going to be staged. That annoyed me.
ReplyDeleteAll in all, though, not a bad movie.
You are correct Mr. Dave; it is Long Beach in the background. We're also the primary backdrop for CSI Miami (low point/high point: walking out of my place one morning and seeing a car launching into the water for a CSI shot and David Caruoso handing out signed photos of himself to anyone that walked by).
ReplyDeleteThat was off topic, but I'm just saying, yeah, every movie seems to be in LBC or Vancouver now. Nice article.
Aside from the F-35/Semi confrontation, I really enjoyed Live Free or Die Hard Without Timothy Olyphant's Moustache. It's pure escapist action, very light on the thinking.
ReplyDeleteYep, the helicopter scene bugged me too. Musta been LA. That port looked like nothing I've seen on the east coast.
Happy birthday, Dave!
Juan... out!
I didn't notice it much in this move, but what usually bothers me about so many films that take place in D.C. is that they always forget about D.C.building height restrictions. It's a very flat city, with no skyscrapers and very few unique looking buildings outside of the Mall. The layout of D.C.'s streets lend to a lot of triangular shaped buildings since builders need to maximize space due to the city's restrictions.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but did he say "Yippee ki yay, motherfucker" or not??? I wrote a whole post last week beginning with the premise that that line, the catchphrase for the whole Die Hard series, wouldn't make it past the censors in a PG-13 movie -- that the movie would cut away before he could finish the word, or it would be drowned out by a gunshot, or explosion, or something like that. Was I right?
ReplyDeleteDrowned by gunshot and yes, the phrase loses it's impact because of it.
ReplyDelete"First of all, it's not really a Die Hard movie."
ReplyDeleteAh, see, I thought that was only me that felt that way. John McClane was WAY too confident about everything, which just isn't John McClane at all. He perseveres despite doubting his ability to pull off the insane. By this point in time, Bruce Willis is Bruce Willis, and has eclipsed the John McClane persona (though that went a long way to defining what the Bruce Willis persona is)... thus, I'd be just as comfortable if Willis's character was named simply A Dude.
And Stephanie:
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry you know so many people who like such terrible movies. The first Underworld was perhaps the dullest, most insanely boring two hours of my life, and I never allowed myself to get anywhere near the second one.
My theory is that John McClane is the Reverse Samson. The less hair he has, the stronger he gets. Since he's now totally bald, he's totally invincible.
ReplyDeleteI stopped thinking about how retarded things were every time he got behind the wheel of a car after he killed that helicopter. I don't know what the statistical probability of it was, but man, just the thought of him knowing if he hit that obstacle juuuuuuust right, he'd launch his car off it and hit the chopper.
And boy am I glad I stopped thinking at that point, or I never would have bought the jet fight. Wonder if Mark Millar felt ripped off by that surfing the jet shot or not...
Dave, you will not speak ill or make Ryan Seacrest comparisons about Seth motherfucking Bullock. ;)
ReplyDelete"Since he's now totally bald, he's totally invincible."
ReplyDeleteI would have used the word, "unbreakable."
So how DO you feel about the other three, Mr. McCampbell?
ReplyDeleteDie Hard ended at the second installment. Die Hard 3 wasn't a Die Hard movie either since it broke the formula of having him in a confined space and adding in the "buddy film" elements with Sam Jackson.
ReplyDeleteAlthough it's not in the press kit, you may enjoy this frame from that steaming vat of Bay known as "Pearl Harbor":
ReplyDeleteHey guys, did we forget something in this shot?
Speaking of one locale standing in for another, that's the focus of my rarely updated blog, This Pedro Thing. I noticed most other people don't see their small home town (in my case, San Pedro, CA) in movies and tv shows on an almost daily basis, so I thought I'd document it.
As a DC-Metro area native, I completely noticed they weren't actually in DC, but for different reasons than everyone else. They're in the car with the FBI agent, in downtown DC, and Jason Long's character is hungry and says, "We just passed another Arby's". Sorry, but there are no Arby's restaurants in downtown DC. As a former fat kid, I know these things...
ReplyDeleteWhoops! I meant "Justin" Long. I just got so dang worked up over the Arby's tease that I gave him the wrong first name. Stupid Arby's...
ReplyDeleteOh my god...Olyphant does look like Seacrest.
ReplyDeleteI thought the movie was BADASS. But as you know, I have the mentality of an eighth grader when it comes to these things.
I can not COUNT the number of films that claim to take place in NYC or on Long Island (y'know...the big honkin' island next to Manhattan that juts out into the Atlantic) and in every damn one of them, I see MOUNTAINS in the background.
ReplyDeleteWHA???
There are NO mountains in NYC or L.I.
Maybe a hill or three.
The oldest film I can recall doing this was the gloriously bad "DEATHRACE 2000" by Roger "I can film any movie in a week for 25 dollars" Corman.
The racers come out of the "Lincoln Tunnel" and head to Long Island (ON THEIR WAY to the other friggin side of the country - what are they doing...a "Reverse-Columbus"? Going East to go West?) and all you can see are huge mountains in the background.
It's actually something that drives my wife more nutso than it does me.
I can always claim "parallel Bizarro Earth" or something.
~P~
P-TOR
I think it would have been hysterical if Justin Long's character would have sat down at the PC and said, "Ah, I'm so used to working on a Mac! F'ing PCs!"
ReplyDeleteLFoDH was over the top, but fun.
Oh man ....I LIVE in Vancouver and it just cracks us up...
ReplyDeleteThat and all the rain.
On the topic of not-even-trying-to-make-one-location-stand-in-for-another, I have to add one that I remember because it relates to my hometown of Columbus, Ohio:
ReplyDeleteIn an episode of that Pretender TV show, they had a story about some campus sniper killing students at The Ohio State University (location: Columbus, Ohio) Now, I don't expect them to come and film their silly TV show on the OSU campus, or even to use some stock footage of the more famous/recognizable buildings. Let's face it, for the purposes of a TV show, any large old brick building can be a campus building somewhere.
But, the least they could have done is not film the outdoor scene where you see rows and rows of palm trees in the background. Columbus has a lot of things, but last I checked, palm trees weren't one of them.
Ooh! Ooh! Can I play too?
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning of The Graduate, a car is shown driving on the upper deck of the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The problem? It's supposed to be heading to Berkeley, which is in the East Bay, while the upper deck of the bridge is westbound to San Francisco!
Also, they have the USC campus, which is flat and full of brick buildings, stand in for UC Berkeley, which is built on the side of a hill and is mostly concrete.
vericode: thbtp. Even the blog software is blowing the raspberry at Hollywood.
My fave DC movie pet peeve is in the American President when the President is teasing Annette Benning for being late again coming from the Hill and she sheepishly admits to getting confused by DuPont Circle. Meanwhile, the rest of us DCers are confused as to why she'd be in DuPont Circle in the first place as it is a more or less straight shot on Penn from the Capitol to the White House.
ReplyDeleteDave! "The villian in Live Free Or Die Hard"? It's Timothy fuckin' Olyphant man. Maybe he looked a little like Seacrest, but don't disrespect the man like that. I thought Olyphant's talent was wasted in the role, however.
ReplyDeleteDave,
ReplyDeleteThe bad guy, Tim Olymphant, does look like Ryan Seacrest. But I think you've never seen an episode of Deadwood, b/c there's no way you would ever mistake the two if you had.
No, I know my problem when I see this movie is that every time I see him, I'm going to have a hard time forgetting the cussing, violent, no-shit taking, widow-screwing, angry sheriff who'll beat you to death with his bare hands. And he was the good guy on that show.
I was disappointed in this one, because -- as many cool kills and ca-razy explosions as there are -- it still felt like a very generic American action film. I can't imagine re-watching it again, ever, for any reason.
ReplyDeleteAnd McClane as untouchable superhero is kind of dull, if only because the invincible badass has become such a standard trope in modern action movies that I wish we could get one with a more street-level protagonist who actually had to, y'know, struggle, and maybe even get really, really roughed up in the process. Everybody is Batman in today's movies, and that's kind of a shame.
Olyphant-usually pretty solid actor.
ReplyDeleteLive Free or Die Hard? The only thing I got from him was that he was the ultimate middle manager you want to see fall down a flight of stairs (or thirty).
The best part had to be all the declations of how bad-ass of a hacker he was, but he never did anything and just glowered triumphantly over his crack team of Cheeto-eaters and Mountain Dew-chuggers.
The ONE time fingers touched keyboard was a total 'Nick Burns, Your Company's Computer Guy' moment.
Good flick though (and this is coming from someone who lives in the Baltimore/DC area...).
It should have been called 'Die Hard: Dead Hard' in the UK ('dead hard' roughly translates as 'really tough').
ReplyDeleteIt should have.
Tim Olyphant always makes me think of a young Billy Bob Thornton. It's eerie.
ReplyDeleteI felt pretty much the same about the movie. I liked it....but only if I turned my brain off.
ReplyDeleteif you get angry about buildings from the wrong city in movies, try living in Prague. Prague has officially doubled for every city in europe with no thought to conceal it whatsoever. In Eurotrip prague was berlin, rome, london, paris, amsterdam, bratislava (but not prague interestingly)
ReplyDeletethe worst was in "van helsing" when the vampire woman standing on charles bridge with the czech national theatre in the background says "here in budapest..." arg!
it would be like standing in front of the white house and lincoln memorial saying "here in st. louis..."
keny from prague
to quote studio 60, Vancouver "looks like Boston, California". best line to come out of that show.
ReplyDeleteI saw Live Free or Die Hard at a matinee the day it opened and loved it.
ReplyDeleteSure, it's completely ludicrous, but I always found the first 4 pretty ludicrous too. I mean, you do remember that he jumps from a helicopter onto the wing of a plane (at takeoff speed as I believe it was starting to leave the ground) then has a 2 minute fight, then another 2 minute fight then lights enough fuel to act as a run way for planes that then start all landing on the same runway within seconds of each other (seriously, it looks like a command and conquer game on that runway at the end). How long is that runway? Never mind the fact that he "just happened" to be in the same wrong place at the same wrong time. That always drove me nuts and that's why I enjoyed the third one so much, McClane was targetted instead of coincidental again.
Or how about the scene where he and Sam Jackson try and climb down the tow cable then fall about 90 feet to land on the boat from the third movie (my personal favourite of the four)?
Now, the Jet vs. Mac truck scene was completely ludicrous, no doubt about it, but I actually found the jumping off the jet thing to be more believable than the jet blowing up a highway then flying in the middle of traffic.
All that being said, I enjoyed the movie, I can see why people don't think of it as a "Die Hard" movie, but if you think of it that way I don't think you can think of the third one as a Die Hard movie either.
I think Lukzur nailed it: ""Bruce Willis is Jack Bauer in True Lies II". Unfortunately, Dave, I forgot to leave my critical thinking skills at home. I can definitely see how that might have helped with the increasing of the enjoyment and the mitigating of the pointing-and-laughing.
ReplyDeleteFor anyone who needs a summary of the series, here's the most Airwolf music video ever:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTyw6cq86kY
Having just seen the real Seacrest in the hilarious (though not because of his efforts) Knocked Up, Olyphant bore no resemblance to him in my eyes. Although I would like to see what Seacrest could do with the Hitman role.
ReplyDeleteI'm sick like that.
I am currently watching Live Free or Die hard for the 10th time. Thank you charter for being so screwed up that I get free pay per view movies round the clock by simply bypassing my stb and going to my qam tuner.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I agree with most of the posts. Also having grown up in Long Beach where so many movies are filmed and attending USC, it's always fun to notice Bovard Auditorium and Doheny library. The jet vs truck scene did piss me off cause it was so over the top, but the rest of the movie was pretty good. Not up to Clerks II standards, but pretty good.
Hello!
ReplyDeleteI am contacting you because I am working with the authors of a book about blogs, and I'd like to request permission to use the photograph you have posted in this book. Please contact me at matt@wefeelfine.org, and I'd be happy to give you more information about the project. Please paste a link to your blog in the subject field. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Matt
This won't really have effect, I think so.
ReplyDeletehere
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