Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here with a look at this week's sequel release, Live Free or Die Hard. Should you care? Read on...

As I enter every summer movie season, there's always one major release that I have a tough time generating any advanced enthusiasm for. Many people are telling me Transformers is that movie for them this summer, and while I never had any great love for Transformers as a toy or cartoon, what I've seen of the film has made me at least curious to sample it. No, for me the film I have yet to garner any lever of excitement about is Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth entry in the Bruce Willis action series. Now don't get me wrong, just because I can't drum up any early self-buzz for a movie doesn't mean I won't like it. Last holiday season, I could not have cared less about the new Rocky film, but I truly enjoyed the nostalgia ride of Rocky Balboa. But seeing the decidedly low-tech John McClane (Willis) go against an army of cyber-terrorists didn't exactly get my juices flowing like Die Hard movies of the past.

A dozen years have passed since John McClane last graced movie screens, but Live Free barely acknowledges the missing years. There are one or two lines of dialog that allude to past one-man adventures, and yes, McClane does have a daughter in college now. But beyond that, it's business as usual. This time around New York Det. McClane is assigned to pick up one of the nation's greatest hackers, a youngster named Matt played appropriately enough by the "Mac man" himself, Justin Long. Matthew worked on a algorithm for a secret project, so secret in fact that even he didn't know who he was working for. But soon other hacker buddies of Matt's start showing up dead, and were it not for McClane just coincidentally being off his beat in New Jersey (where his daughter goes to school), Matthew would have been yet another victim. McClane and Matt travel from Jersey to D.C., where they find out from an FBI contact (Cliff Curtis) that invisible villains have started what is referred to as a "fire sale," as in everything must go, as in knock out all computer-controlled communications, financial institutions, transportation grids, power, security, everything that makes our fine nation run and keep running.

So for most of Live Free or Die Hard, Willis and Long are running all over the place attempting to locate and stop the cyber-terrorists (led by the sufficiently menacing Timothy Olyphant as Thomas Gabriel) from executing their ultimate plan, which I will not reveal here. And boy let me tell you, there is nothing more terrifying than a bunch of guys tapping away on a keyboard. Gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. Granted, the stunts are a little flashier and the stakes are a bit higher, but beyond that the film is average. Not terrible, just so-so. Part of it is that it's really been fun watching Willis take chances and grow as an actor since the one-liner days of John McClane. His work with M. Night Shyamalan and Robert Rodriguez alone has been worth getting thrilled about. So to see him retreat into something comfortable (that will undoubtedly be successful on some level, I'm sure) is a bit of a disappointment. And if you are going to return to familiar ground, give us something new in the character, not just in the story or the weapons. And no, the cameo by Kevin Smith as another hacker (an idea that sounds great when you hear it, but is executed poorly) does not count.

Director Len Wiseman (who made both Underworld films) does as good a job as he can with the screenplay from Mark Bomback, but in the end, the plot might have worked better as an episode of "24." That's certainly what this Die Hard entry feels like, and I'm fairly certain that's roughly the time span that passes here. I've had worse ideas. Look, it's the summer. I know that standards decline as temperatures increase; I accept that. But bringing back John McClane and the Die Hard franchise is a big deal. The only problem is Live Free or Die Hard doesn't feel like a big deal; it feels like a paint-by-number action movie with a lead actor delivering some stunted dialog and going through the motions we've come to expect.

Capone
capone@aintitcool.com

Capone