Review of Live Free or Die Hard (2007) by Brutuso. — 13 Aug 2007

The action was a little spoiled by the absurdity factor, and the Dad/daughter plotline creaks like a door on a pirate ship. And the geek sub-culture thing with Kevin Smith etc was too cheesy for words (Hey geek! Can you patch me into the totally secure FBI HQ comms system despite the power grid being out and the world collapsing? Oh sure, no problem, O mighty bleeding one! Give me 10 secs).

But the action was reasonable, even though McClane should have been dead and broken in the first 15 minutes, ie the first time he fell several stories onto iron bars and concrete. The fight with Maggie Q was sufficiently brutal to hold the attention however, and the villain was almost ruthless enough to be interesting.

Although the usual problem emerged - why did he not just kill Bruce et all when he could have? However, the humour was OK, and the hysteria when people find they are not able to rely on the "system" was rather droll.

But a basically entertaining movie, which was the objective, after all. It certainly moves, like a movie should. This film is not a good advertisement for the quality of American flyover construction though.

Talk about a house of cards.