Live Free or Die Hard 2.5 hours of cartoonish violence and humor, occasionally interrupted with bouts of ludacrisp gibson hacking.
Seriously, these guys were switching from the national social security database to local 911 dispatch systems in less time than it takes me to log into my gmail account. I suspended disbelief a lot when watching this film (F35 surfing, anyone?), but I had a hard time with all the computer stuff.
Hacking a satellite in fifteen seconds with a cell phone? Teh awesome.
And then there’s the actual movie. It’s almost pure action. There’s probably five minutes of non-crisis and the rest of the film is 100% explodo and Bruce Willis snark. And what explodo! The things that go on in this film range from the slightly ridiculous to the completely fucking bonkers, with the majority leaning towards the bonkers end of the spectrum. Outside of the F35 surfing, I’d be hard pressed to pick just one moment of insanity to playfully ridicule as there are just too many to choose from. Maybe aiming a car up a dividing barrier and over a toll booth to perfectly strike a helicopter? That one was pretty good… It’s all fun stuff, but you’ve got to check your brain at the door in a big way long before you walk into the theater for this one.
One thing I will complain about is the scant screen time reserved for the always excellent Cyril Raffaelli. As I mentioned in by District B13 review, Raffaelli is a talented screen fighter and stunt man and he had far too few moments to really show his stuff in this film. The bits he did have were pretty good (if obscured by the camera work), but I wanted more.
By the way, I love the “I’m a Mac” guy, Justin Long, in this film. He always got on my nerves in the commercials, but here he’s actually funny.
RSS - Posts