Vibrating with Rapt Anticipation: Live Free or Die Hard

this looks pretty awesome, actually

My only regret is that my best friend in high school that I went to see the first one with lives in North Carolina now. Cause that would be awesome to go for a guys night out without the wives and girlfriends, and see fuckin' Die Hard. And then go have too many beers.

Who the fuck is this Kerm guy? He needs to fuck right off.

Live Free or Fuck Right Off Hard

Right on man.

Yea, bro! Let's get a beers...

I would watch Die Hard Or Die: The Revengeance and drink a beers.

this is going to be so fucking bad. evil computer hacker? cool hacker kid sidekick? kevin smith cameo? what fucking year is this again, 1997?? milo are you on crack

This is going to be incredibly dumb, and I'm still going to go see it as soon as it opens. I'm such a sucker for idiot action movies.

actress who plays bruce willis' daughter in this is hott. maggie q also hott. movie is not so hott, but ok of its ilk. my ears hurt leaving the theater. also, at least 15-20 minutes too long. also, wtf with yuppie nerd as badguy?

Hi, I'm a Mac.

And I'm John McClane.

I'm gonna kill all of 'em.

trying to figure out how to ditch work so I can see this tomorrow

this movie sucked. see hackers again instead.

so wait does this take place in new hampshire

this movie kicked a million pounds of ass

it was fucking rad for sure

lol@anybody who doesn't like it

b-b-but it's only pg-13 wah wah wah

uh... lol@anybody who did like it?

what was your favourite kevin smith scene?

probably when bruce willis threatened to beat him to death

hey wait a second... j0hn, I know you're a dude who likes talking about misogyny on the internet; how did you feel about the scene where he laid a vicious beatdown on the evil asian chick?

that scene was a bit weird

i'll give these movie a few good action scenes... but it basically took everything awesome about die hard and did the opposite. and fuck it for not even letting him finish saying "yipee-ki-yay motherfucker"!

well yeah, it definitely had flaws, and I will probably never be able to enjoy it again because every mention of the words "fire sale" will remind me of Tobias (a connection which I did not make until right after the movie had ended). but it succeeded so well in having an evil criminal mastermind who is so incredibly irritating that you're on the edge of your seat just waiting for his ass to get dropped.

also, that one hacker looked like Harry Potter.

(btw the "annoying criminal mastermind" thing is the only reason that Die Hard With A Vengeance was even remotely watchable)

i thought the criminal mastermind in this one was super-boring. olyphant can be fun when he's all smarmy (go, the girl next door), but when he's uptight and douchy (like here and deadwood) he's snoozeville. he's no GRUBER i'll tell you that.

hey wait a second... j0hn, I know you're a dude who likes talking about misogyny on the internet; how did you feel about the scene where he laid a vicious beatdown on the evil asian chick?

I don't think it's misogynistic for a guy to beat the shit out of a cartoon-villain woman who's spent the last twenty minutes trying to kill him! at the same time, yeah, there's something real basic inside that makes me wince harder when a man's hitting a woman onscreen. Especially when I'd been enjoying watching her beat the garbage outta Bruce Willis for a while. All told, though, I think even the most ardent, active defender of a woman's right to live free from the threat of violence will still concede that if a woman has been proactively trying to kill a man with every weapon at her disposal so that she might destabilize the world economy and help an evil villain seize power, then it's perfectly acceptable for that man to beat her up so as to foil her evil plans.

Al Gore beats the shit out of Katharine Harris, film at eleven.

xpost: yeah, that was basically how I felt ("wait, why do I feel guilty about enjoying this? she's totally evil, I've spent the entire movie hating her, I'm glad she's getting her comeuppance!"). but I guess what weirded me out was just that the scene was so funny. like, when he picked her up and threw her through the window, a lot of people in the theater (myself included) were laughing, which I can't imagine happening if it had been the same exact scene with an evil dude in her place. but I think most of it was "holy shit, did he seriously just do that?"-style laughter, because violence against women is still so taboo, and to see it happen so cartoonishly and gratuitously is kind of jarring.

it was kind of nuts that she survived being hit by a SUV and driven through like 10 walls and down an elevator shaft. and seemed to be in tip-top shape after, too!

not that i really care about that stuff in most action movies but this is the series that made something wonderful and way more thrilling about the fact that a guy was barefoot and had to cross a room full of broken glass.

Anyone gonna call out weird hoverplane? The thing went like, straight up at a point. At maybe 5 miles an hour.
Movie was great.

I commented on the ridiculousness of the hoverplane immediately after seeing the movie, my friends maintained that "they already have planes that can do that!", I argued that VTOL is a totally different beast from helicopter-style hovering maneuvers, one friend insisted that he had heard about some experimental plane with those capabilities, we decided to just pretend that the plane in the movie was some cutting-edge prototype (hence the fact that they only sent one). at any rate, it required less suspension of disbelief than any of the computer stuff (wtf at elaborate virus-armed delete-key-triggered bombs).

i agree that in a make-believe cartoony world, beating up on an evil chick is not a horrible thing per se, but keep in mind the main audience for this film (esp. since this is the "clean" pg-13 cut) and it really is kinda fucked-up how gleefully the audience cheers on her demise. i'm no dworkinista, but it made me feel kinda disturbed.

Anyone gonna call out weird hoverplane? The thing went like, straight up at a point. At maybe 5 miles an hour.

The F-35B can do VTOL landings but not quite the maneuvering it was doing in the movie. It's still pretty impressive though.

Anyway, what I wanted out of this movie was:

1. McClaine irritated at live, the universe, everything
2. Random acts of bureaucratic incompetence and/or cluelessness which irritate McClaine as much as the bad guys
3. Eurotrash villians
4. State of the art bang-bang and kaboom

I got some of that, and yeah plenty of shit blew up (ummm, holy crap did it ever). Justin Long was actually pretty good, but McClain seemed grimmer than his usual "can't you guys die so I can go home?" attitude. Main bad guy never seemed all that threatening... I wished that Maggie Q was the main baddie with Olyphant has chief henchman.

I thought the movie was great, but after I got home I wanted to see the original movie again and not this one.

this was very good. great action, pacing, etc. the references to 9/11 and katrina in regards to governmental unpreparedness were a nice touch that i wasn't expecting.

i'll give these movie a few good action scenes... but it basically took everything awesome about die hard and did the opposite. and fuck it for not even letting him finish saying "yipee-ki-yay motherfucker"!

i was reasonably entertained by this, but ^^^^otm

HE WAS ON A PLANE not like IN a plane but ON a plane

also lucy mcclane=hotttttt

and Kevin Smith as THE WARLOCK lolwtf

wait so he is actually in this

Olyphant looked creepy as fuck. We didn't get to spend enough time with him to get the full sense of his evil.

The hacking was lame (seriously, didn't Ed Furlong use Mac Guy's door hack to bust an ATM almost 20 years ago now????), and the climax wasn't as exciting as hoped for.

Saved by Willis being Willis + daughter also being a badass.

too bad justin long had terrible taste in tunes

did anyone else get the Hitman trailer? Bald Olyphant is not a pretty sight.

I love Die Hard 1-3, but this was complete crap. The script was just brutal, and Timothy Olyphant was easily the worst villain in any of the movies. I mean, I love Tim, and it WAS a thankless part, but he didn't do himself any favors with his boring performance.

Also, Kevin Smith was brutally bad (and I *like* Kevin Smith).

Timothy Olyphant was easily the worst villain in any of the movies

worse than william sadler? oh please

this movie totally saved the summer. granted i haven't seen transformers or knocked up yet, but it was awesome. i was surprised how much it felt like a die hard movie.

my position is summed up by mike lupica in last sunday's new york daily news:

"I haven't seen 'Live Free or Die Hard,' but my position has always been that Bruce Willis couldn't make enough "Die Hard" movies to suit me."

I saw it. I liked the building that housed the "National Data Administration" Anyone know what that is in real life?

worse than william sadler? oh please

Sadler was way better.

this movie kinda blew my mind

i am glad i did not see it in the theatre b/c i wld def need some kind of mental health care

it kind of defies review. maybe i need to give it time.
but i mean, the fighter jet part??? whoa
this will not age well, but hey

(original die hard 4ever)

also, when McClain shoots himself through the shoulder to save the day.

*Sigh* thats a real man

this was fucking awesome

Yeah, i watched last weekend and thought of TOMBOT the whole time--easily the best Die Hard

this movie sucked. see hackers again instead.

-- s1ocki, Wednesday, June 27, 2007 4:17 AM

s1ocks i heart hackers but u mad rong

i call bullshit on this movie btw -- based on the timeline of die hard, lucy mcclain is my age and i was NOT attending undergrad in 2007. you want me to believe that the military would just shoot up baltimore willy nilly, or that baltimore or any part of maryland has the flyway road structures represented in the film, or that john mcclain shooting himself point blank in the chest would not result in serious serious knock-yr-shit out injury, or that you can somehow throw a car at a helicopter, i'm there ok? i'm with you, these things all make sense to me. but this timeline continuity error -- that, sirs, is a dirty bastard trick.

that all being said the tunnel sequence is the greatest filmmaking of all-time.

ps

this movie sucked

the italian dude who dies second to last wasnt given enough screen time imo.

dude any movie that features a 5-minute sequence in which a car is thrown -- multiple times -- at the mac guy which ends with john mcclaine somehow driving a police car up a support beam into a helicopter does not "suck"

i dunno, i just kept wishing for brains against the wall instead if weak CGI squibs on the chest, + no kevin smith and better villains.

yeah this computer nerd guy + kung fu chick was not as awesome as jeremy irons and sam phillips, i give you that easily.

the dvd also improves procedures because the swearing is back in.

i was pretty mad at this movie for throwing the awesome die hard idea completely out the window and for having a sucky villain but in retrospect i must give it respect for having a scene where bruce willis basically wrestles a fighter plane to the ground

tbh i think the problem i had with this film was the same problem i have with other action films like these lately, where they give you one strong hero, a lead villain, a sidekick, a cute girl, and maybe a skeptical ally (cf. cliff curtis' federal agent), but other than the lead hero they don't actually seem to be anything beyond a "type". the first die hard had these really dope actors filling all these small roles who took the time to create these interesting characters, and the film took the time for throwaway shit like that one terrorist's secret hunger for candy bars and the fbi agents zinging each other in the helicopter.

i hate to get all morbsy re: this series but it's sort of the difference between hollywood twenty years ago and hollywood now, and the difference between a director who isn't anonymous and boring like wiseman vs a guy who always brought a particular style to his films and clearly had a complete interest in his material like mctiernan.

maybe this movie doesn't suck, i dunno, i just feel like the difference in quality between this and the first one is so vast.

god there was some behind the scenes promotional "documentary" on the dvd special features and literally every other sentence out of wiseman's mouth was how he loved die hard when he was a "kid" (in quotes because a quick IDM search reveals his definition of "kid" is flexible considering he'd have been in his later teens when die hard came out) and how excited he was about die hard, this movie that defined his "childhood" etc etc etc -- literally every other line out of his mouth! i was like, good christ i hope he didn't talk like this on the set otherwise bruce willis should've decked the guy, who the hell wants their supposed boss to be carrying on for hours about, basically, how much younger he is than you?

he also really obnoxiously made some point about how, since he loved die hard so much as a "child", he obviously knew the character of john mcclaine as well as willis.

overall, i did not care for this person, len wiseman.