Live Free or Die Hard

What happened here? What happened to the simple, escapist revenge story? Or the avaricious, malicious greed story? A villainous villain and an evil motive. A good guy to stop him. Black and white. It's the black and whiteness of it that helps you not think, not analyze, just enjoy. Laugh and gasp and cheer Isn't that what "Die Hard" is supposed to be about? Well, it's not what "Live Free or Die Hard" is about.

With a confusing opening - three different faces hovering near three different computer screens in three different locations - it is already impossible to tell who is who and whether they are good or bad. And where's Bruce Willis already? What the heck is happening? Based on one of the faces getting killed, we can assume that the Asian woman is a bad guy. The other two two hackers are neutral guys? (I mean, they ARE hackers.)

When Bruce Willis finally comes on the scene, it's right after we've met his daughter, Lucy. She's a teenager or a 25-year-old woman; I couldn't tell. She's making out with a guy in his car and he's getting fresh and not taking no' for an answer. Then, out of nowhere, her dad bursts onto the scene and intervenes. Lucy goes off on her dad, saying she doesn't want to talk to him and she doesn't appreciate him spying on her and he should just leave her alone. Whoa. Hold up. Your dad just saved you from a guy you were yelling at and were two seconds from storming away from anyway. And what did he do to make you not want anything to do with him? Is it just because you're a bratty teenager? Is that what we're supposed to assume in this phoned-in, vague writing? We will, of course, see Lucy again but only to serve the plot, as the villains use her against her self-assured dad, who should know by now that you should safeguard your family if you're going to mouth off to the bad guys and you know you have a vulnerability they can find out about and get to (i.e. your wife, your daughter).

I'm not even going to pick on Bruce Willis's age. They do enough of that in the movie, with McClane's inability to understand the scope or inner workings of the World Wide Web or Internet technology, the manipulation of which is the crux of the film. What troubled me about this older, crustier John McClane weren't his wrinkles but his new politics, illustrated by the misogynistic, racist, right-leaning things that came out of his mouth. This is not the John McClane I remember from "Die Hard," who took us on a perilous though thoroughly entertaining ride, battling evildoers while he remained our indisputable hero, with his wise-cracking charm and serious smarts. Here, our hero has slipped down some notches toward unlikable, while the villain is almost sympathetic. (Not to mention hot.) As the villain (Thomas Gabriel*) began his siege on the country, I got angry, just like I was supposed to, and looked forward to McClane delivering on his threat to track him down and "kick [his] ass." Until McClane got Gabriel on the phone again and repeated the same threat. We get it. You're John McClane; it's your job to kick bad guys' asses. What happened to your wit, though? Can't you change it up the second time? (More lazy writing.) (*we don't learn his name till about halfway through the movie and I had already forgotten it by the time I got home-not a good sign, from a movie-making standpoint)

Soon it is revealed why Thomas Gabriel is doing what he's doing: he was employed years ago by the Department of Defense and tried to open their eyes to the vulnerability of the country's online systems, and they rewarded his efforts by discrediting him and destroying his reputation. That resonated with me, knowing how this government (especially this administration) operates. So, sure, this villain is a bit off (okay, a lot off), but it is easy to see why he was driven there.

In addition to my unease with the grayness that was developing in the good/bad dichotomy, I had a problem with how a couple of the situations in the movie were handled. Namely that they (unintentionally, I believe) made the characters seem stupid and the movie that much less enjoyable. Like the first foe McClane comes up against once he and Matt Farrell (the hacker-turned-sidekick) have tracked down the baddies in West Virginia. It's the Asian woman (Mai) from the opening sequence. McClane is armed; she has been incapacitated or disarmed. A good move would be to shoot her. But instead he chooses to half-heartedly fight her until she starts kicking his ass. It seems the age-old, hold-back-cuz-it's-a-lady hero dilemma. By the time he's finally done with her, they've kicked each other around an entire room, he's hit her with a truck and, blinded by sadism and pure spite, stupidly run the truck with her still holding onto the windshield into an elevator shaft. This is when McClane started losing me and my faith in him began to wane. I thought he was an efficient eliminator of bad guys, a quick thinker on his feet. Not here he isn't. This move I'd classify as boneheaded and, p.s., not fun to watch. They struggle some more in the elevator shaft and McClane finally gets out, and Mai doesn't. Should've shot her in the first place. Gah.

There's also the moment the government realizes where Gabriel is; up until this point, he has been untraceable and doing serious damage everyone is desperate to stop. The reveal is two government guys discussing that Gabriel must be at Woodlawn, a facility in Maryland. They are in D.C. a car ride away. A third government guy approaches and they break it down for him. None of the three seems to be in a particular hurry to get to Woodlawn to, say, STOP Gabriel as soon as possible, since he is systematically shutting down the country's functionality. Time is of the essence! Why don't they get this? The audience gets it. It's maddening. One or two scenes later the third guy becomes all, "I gotta get to Woodlawn, stat," and demands a helicopter or some other superfast transpo, but the momentum's been lost and the audience is not fooled. Another bonehead story point.

Frustrating story points aside, what the movie ultimately failed to do was make the bad bad enough and the good good enough. Lucy should have had legitimate beef with her dad so we could develop some organic sympathy for her; Thomas Gabriel should have been shown throwing someone off a roof for no good reason or telling off someone in the service industry - something to show he's evil and not just a misunderstood, kinda crazy guy with a bone to pick with the government. Then I could've rooted whole-heartedly for McClane to ice this bad guy and save his daughter. I believe that is what I was supposed to be rooting for. As it stood, I didn't like the daughter and kinda didn't like McClane much by that point, so I didn't care if he got her back or if she got killed.I think this movie suffered from inadequacy of set-up. Unless it's supposed to be a grayer area kind of story... But this was a 4th of July release, for goodness's sake; it could not have been designed to make us think, could it? I doubt it. And I didn't want to think; I just wanted to have a good time. I wanted escapist, action-packed fun with some Bruce Willis charm. I got the action, but the escapism and charm were in short supply.