SOC
01-07-2007, 02:32 AM
Stars Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant,
Maggie Q, Clioff Curtis, Kevin Smith
Directed by Len Wiseman
With a Yippee-Ki-Yay motherfudger — 18 years after beating Professor Snape and his bad guys at Nakatomi Tower, and 12 years since his last outing — super-grumpy supercop John McClane is back on our screens ... looking older, balder and so much worse for wear. Oh, and with a cleaner mouth this time.
Yes, thanks to those greedy executives at Fox — who believe, in their heart of black hearts, that filmmaking is all about the bucks, not the art — we have a much kinder, gentler and almost expletive free Die Hard. In fact, the infamous f-word only crops up once in the entire film, although big John is allowed to let loose with the occasional asshole and dickhead. But does the lack of foul language actually detract from the film? For me (and countless others who have been debating this topic online for months) — yes, it does; it takes away that grittiness, that edge, the earlier films had, especially the first one. Fear not, though — there’s enough action to almost, but not quite, make up for it. And thanks to Willis, who is on top of his game in the role that established him as a big-screen star, it’s one of the most enjoyable summer movies so far.
This time the villain is that nice Seth Bullock from Deadwood, better known as actor Timothy Olyphant. He plays Thomas Gabriel, who was once a top systems designer for the US government, and he’s a bit pissed off after trying to warn them of the post 9/11 dangers that confront them, and which they have ignored. So instead he decides to teach them a lesson, and make a bit — well, quite a lot, actually — of money at the same time. He wants to show the US how easy it is for terrorists to hack into the computer systems that run the country by, er, becoming a terrorist and hacking into the computer systems that run the country, using a team of computer whizkids — a bunch of whizkids who, as in all Hollywood films about hackers, are lightning fast on a keyboard, never use a mouse and can easily make sense of incoherent lines of code scrolling rapidly up a screen. Right.
Long story short: New York City detective McClane gets involved when he has to escort clever-dick hacker Matt Farrell (Long) to the FBI in Washington. Of course, Gabriel wants Farrell dead. Cue lots of extreme stunts involving cars, trucks, helicopters, lift shafts and, eventually, an F-16 fighter plane, which Brucie rides a la Arnie in True Lies. And the stunts are big, loud and impressive — and real, which is a nice change from this CGI-overdosed world we now live in. The humour is there, too. In one scene, after McClane has sent a police car hurling up a ramp and into a chopper, Farrell says: "You just killed a helicopter with a car." He replies: “I was out of bullets.” The world weariness is there too, perhaps more so than in the earlier films. “Know what you get for being a hero? You get shot at.” Lines like that go some way to grounding a film that verges on going a little too far into silly, overblown Schwarzenegger territory.
After an appalling amount of destruction and a pretty big (but fairly bloodless) body count, the good guys win, the bad guys get their comeuppance (in a scene that will have the hardcore Die Hard fans whooping for joy) and we just KNOW there will be a Die Hard 5 (not least for the fact that Gabriel has cleaned out McClane’s pension fund, which means he’s now got a long way to go before retirement) — plenty of chances to foil a few more evil terrorists. Director Wiseman, who until now has only made the two Underworld films, understands the action genre and keeps things moving at a fair pace. Olyphant is suitably smooth and evil as the villain — an American this time, which makes a nice change from all the Germans, South Africans and Brits we normally see.
There are a few annoying lapses in logic (the New York Stock Exchange being open on July 4, the biggest holiday on the US calendar) and stereotypes (the afore-mentioned computer whizkids, Gabriel’s Asian sidekick being a martial arts expert, and his machine-gun-armed minions being unable to hit the side of a barn). But all that’s forgivable in the world that John McClane inhabits. What really made the film for me, though, was indie director Kevin Smith playing the king of the hackers, Warlock. Who lives in his mother’s basement. And has a life-size cardboard cutout of Boba Fett. Perfect!
Maggie Q, Clioff Curtis, Kevin Smith
Directed by Len Wiseman
With a Yippee-Ki-Yay motherfudger — 18 years after beating Professor Snape and his bad guys at Nakatomi Tower, and 12 years since his last outing — super-grumpy supercop John McClane is back on our screens ... looking older, balder and so much worse for wear. Oh, and with a cleaner mouth this time.
Yes, thanks to those greedy executives at Fox — who believe, in their heart of black hearts, that filmmaking is all about the bucks, not the art — we have a much kinder, gentler and almost expletive free Die Hard. In fact, the infamous f-word only crops up once in the entire film, although big John is allowed to let loose with the occasional asshole and dickhead. But does the lack of foul language actually detract from the film? For me (and countless others who have been debating this topic online for months) — yes, it does; it takes away that grittiness, that edge, the earlier films had, especially the first one. Fear not, though — there’s enough action to almost, but not quite, make up for it. And thanks to Willis, who is on top of his game in the role that established him as a big-screen star, it’s one of the most enjoyable summer movies so far.
This time the villain is that nice Seth Bullock from Deadwood, better known as actor Timothy Olyphant. He plays Thomas Gabriel, who was once a top systems designer for the US government, and he’s a bit pissed off after trying to warn them of the post 9/11 dangers that confront them, and which they have ignored. So instead he decides to teach them a lesson, and make a bit — well, quite a lot, actually — of money at the same time. He wants to show the US how easy it is for terrorists to hack into the computer systems that run the country by, er, becoming a terrorist and hacking into the computer systems that run the country, using a team of computer whizkids — a bunch of whizkids who, as in all Hollywood films about hackers, are lightning fast on a keyboard, never use a mouse and can easily make sense of incoherent lines of code scrolling rapidly up a screen. Right.
Long story short: New York City detective McClane gets involved when he has to escort clever-dick hacker Matt Farrell (Long) to the FBI in Washington. Of course, Gabriel wants Farrell dead. Cue lots of extreme stunts involving cars, trucks, helicopters, lift shafts and, eventually, an F-16 fighter plane, which Brucie rides a la Arnie in True Lies. And the stunts are big, loud and impressive — and real, which is a nice change from this CGI-overdosed world we now live in. The humour is there, too. In one scene, after McClane has sent a police car hurling up a ramp and into a chopper, Farrell says: "You just killed a helicopter with a car." He replies: “I was out of bullets.” The world weariness is there too, perhaps more so than in the earlier films. “Know what you get for being a hero? You get shot at.” Lines like that go some way to grounding a film that verges on going a little too far into silly, overblown Schwarzenegger territory.
After an appalling amount of destruction and a pretty big (but fairly bloodless) body count, the good guys win, the bad guys get their comeuppance (in a scene that will have the hardcore Die Hard fans whooping for joy) and we just KNOW there will be a Die Hard 5 (not least for the fact that Gabriel has cleaned out McClane’s pension fund, which means he’s now got a long way to go before retirement) — plenty of chances to foil a few more evil terrorists. Director Wiseman, who until now has only made the two Underworld films, understands the action genre and keeps things moving at a fair pace. Olyphant is suitably smooth and evil as the villain — an American this time, which makes a nice change from all the Germans, South Africans and Brits we normally see.
There are a few annoying lapses in logic (the New York Stock Exchange being open on July 4, the biggest holiday on the US calendar) and stereotypes (the afore-mentioned computer whizkids, Gabriel’s Asian sidekick being a martial arts expert, and his machine-gun-armed minions being unable to hit the side of a barn). But all that’s forgivable in the world that John McClane inhabits. What really made the film for me, though, was indie director Kevin Smith playing the king of the hackers, Warlock. Who lives in his mother’s basement. And has a life-size cardboard cutout of Boba Fett. Perfect!