{"id":2748,"date":"2008-01-27T20:07:55","date_gmt":"2008-01-28T01:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinemacrazed.wordpress.com\/?p=2748"},"modified":"2008-01-27T20:07:55","modified_gmt":"2008-01-28T01:07:55","slug":"live-free-or-die-hard-unrated-version-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/27\/live-free-or-die-hard-unrated-version-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Live Free or Die Hard: Unrated Version (2007)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"So, I opted on the DVD to watch the Unrated version, which sported a few F bombs and a little more edge. I\u2019m sure the Rated and Unrated version probably didn\u2019t sport many differences, but I owed it to myself to give the Unrated version the top priority. I won\u2019t babble about Die Hard, or why the PG-13 rating is stupid, instead I\u2019ll talk about Mary Elizabeth Winstead. This girl is absolutely gorgeous and sure, she may not be Meryl Streep, but she\u2019s definitely one of the finer girls in film today and I dig her role her as John McClane\u2019s daughter Lucy who is, like her dad, rebellious, smart mouthed, and always seems to stare evil down the throat with a smirk.<\/p>\n

In a sense it could be a reflection on the neo-feminazi pop culture engineered by Hollywood, but I actually just attribute it to the fact that she\u2019s McClane\u2019s daughter. Is the movie about her? No, not by a mile, \u201cLive Free or Die Hard\u201d really only features her for a small portion in the climax, and instead rejoins John McClane years after seclusion where he\u2019s now an over-protective dad who follows his daughter around. After internet terrorists begin assassinating hackers and rigging the US to break down, McClane is called in to escort Matthew Farrell to the authorities to help on the case, but Farrell is on the hit list, and now John has to see him to the government and protect his life. Let\u2019s face it, the framework for the movie dictates that this could have been just any other action movie without the \u201cDie Hard\u201d tag, but the cast surely makes the best of it.<\/p>\n

John McClane is still the tough talking, take no prisoners action hero, and Bruce Willis is great here. Bald, thinner and older, Willis approaches McClane again with a different sentiment turning him into another man just doing his job, and being royally pissed off by the new breed of terrorism and criminal element that he simply doesn\u2019t understand. Escorting him in the sidekick theme prevalent in the series is Justin Long, who is a hacker being hunted by terrorist Gabriel\u2019s forces, and pretty much becomes a compact version of McClane, an average smart ass pulled into a humongous situation that he doesn\u2019t know how to handle.<\/p>\n

Long is always funny, and director Wiseman allows him to garner some laughs as Willis\u2019 sidekick, with interplay between the two that is just hilarious. Granted, the set pieces and setting are much more elevated in the action fantasy genre, and not the grit of New York City, but there are some genuinely entertaining sequences that inspired my attention including McClane\u2019s battle with a fighter jet, and a fight in an elevator shaft. McClane is a great film hero in the vein of Dirty Harry, and Willis doesn\u2019t miss a beat. As for Maggie Q, she has a memorable presence here and grabs the best scenes battling with McClane in a laboratory which end up being deliriously far-fetched, but fantastic nonetheless. As an installment of the \u201cDie Hard\u201d series, I don\u2019t know if I loved it like the other films, but I just had fun with what it laid out on the table.<\/p>\n

When is Hollywood going to learn that computer geeks are not scary? They keep attempting to perpetuate an image of the dangerous internet nerd, and it\u2019s forced on us in this lame villain that couldn\u2019t hold a candle to the previous villains if he tried. Okay, sure computer viruses and bringing down the American economy is horrifying, but when have you ever been intimidated by someone at a keyboard? Never. And surely enough the writers don\u2019t provide much of an argument to find our villains scary beyond what they\u2019re capable of with a computer.<\/p>\n

After that, there\u2019s pretty much nothing to the villain Gabriel who is branded with a clich\u00e9 moniker, and a boring temperament that keeps him one of the blander megalomaniacs in the \u201cDie Hard\u201d franchise. The entire time Timothy Olyphant looks bored and his grumbling and mugging for the camera makes for an individual who really fails to keep us in suspense. I wondered where the Timothy Olyphant with the psychotic gleam and twitchy eye from \u201cDeadwood\u201d and \u201cGo\u201d went the entire time here, and dappered up like a Wall Street broker and dialogue comprised of mild whispers and one-liners, he\u2019s pretty much the villain of the new world: A whiny, pompous, and limp internet geek who groans about his life, and can\u2019t really cut it in the man\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

The writers play on the old world McClane battling the new world villainy ad nauseum and I just couldn\u2019t get over how much of the displaced hero in modern times theme was pushed on us from minute one with McClane acting as both the chiseled square jawed hero and the crotchety old man muttering \u201cI don\u2019t understand today\u2019s machines! You damn whippersnappers!\u201d All at once he\u2019s a contradiction, and a superhero. He fights with his daughter because he doesn\u2019t understand young relationships, he fights with authorities because he doesn\u2019t understand modern procedure, he fights with internet villains because he doesn\u2019t understand today\u2019s technology, and he fights with character Faller because he simply doesn\u2019t understand today\u2019s youth. The old generation-new generation dichotomy between McClane and Farrell is weak, and the writers simply milk it for all its worth.<\/p>\n

On the flipside, McClane is completely deviated from his original character mold and he goes from the Everyman in a big situation to a rock star superhero who can fall out of windows without breaking a bone in his body, he can jump high places, can turn cars into projectiles, and is so self-assured that he challenges a fighter jet, and never has a hint of fear or helplessness when fighting to find his daughter. I miss the McClane with a small belly and stubble, and he\u2019s nowhere to be found here.\u00a0 Its hyperactive 80\u2019s chic action crap and I had a blast just the same. It\u2019s far from being as good as the past \u201cDie Hard\u201d installments what with weak political commentary and a lame villain, but nonetheless, I had fun, and Willis thrives as McClane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, I opted on the DVD to watch the Unrated version, which sported a few F bombs and a little more edge. I\u2019m sure the Rated and Unrated version probably didn\u2019t sport many differences, but I owed it to myself to give the Unrated version the top priority. I won\u2019t babble about Die Hard, or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[58,71,164,249,906,922,1087],"class_list":["post-2748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-adventure","tag-bruce-willis","tag-d","tag-science-fiction","tag-sequel","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}