Movie Review: Live Free or Die Hard

"WARNING - POSSIBLE MOVIE SPOILERS"

I just went to see Bruce Willis in the latest episode of the Die Hard series, Live Free or Die Hard. Wow! What a great movie!

Ok, ok, this is a tech blog not "Ebert & Roeper at the Movies", but stick with me on this because I guarantee you there is tech involved. Sure the plot is simple; While the bad guys, lead by Timothy Olyphant's character, Thomas Gabriel, wreak havoc our hero, a New York cop John McClane becomes "a fly in the ointment", "a monkey in the wrench" and there are lots of things blowing up, bullets flying, great one liners, and tech! Lots of tech. There was action, action, and more action. And yes plenty of tech, lots of LCD screens, laptops, PDAs, cell phones, flexible USB keyboards, and a lot more. The Apple ad guy, Justin Long, who used Apple equipment in the movie was the geek that McClain was sent to haul in for questioning .

Justin Long's character, a Black Hat Hacker named Matt Farrell who is wanted for questioning by the FBI, plays well against Bruce Willis' gruff and gritty Detective John McClane. While the the reality of the hacking of systems as depicted in the film is no way that easy, like hacking into the FBI's computer system, the possibe vulnerability of the Nation's cyberinfrastructures are brought into question. Ferrell uses his hacking skills like McClane uses cars to take out helicopters, which gives us the film quotes; Foster: "You just killed a helicopter with a car!" McClane: "I was out of bullets. " Great lines and there are plenty of them. even the bad guy has soem good ones like; John McClane: [after covering a webcam] "Freddy, can you trace these guys?" Gabriel: "Mr. McClane covering the camera does not turn off the microphone."

While I did not like Die Hard 2: Die Harder (it really sucked), and Die hard with a Vengeance (Die Hard 3) as decent, this movie was more like the original. I loved the original Die Hard movie. Actually, I don't ever feel like its Christmas season until I see that movie as it had a Christmas theme and there are Christmas jingles sung in the movie by Sgt. Al Powell (aka Reginald Veljohnson). I digress. The feel of the plot, the pace of the film and the action sequences were impressive. The visual effects were great and it is amazing what can be done with CGI these days. We were hanging on the edge of our seats at times and even jumping out of them, like my wife did once or twice.

It has been a long time since I was in a theater and the whole audience got into the movie. When McClain knocks off another bad guy the whole theater cheered. I paid $9.75 for my ticket and I feel that I got my money's worth. I left that theater feeling great having forgotten about the real world and all of its troubles. While I don't think anyone would categorize it as a "Feel Good Movie", well except for geeks and gun lovers, I sure felt great! So take some time out of your week and go see this movie. If you loved the original Die Hard, then you will love this movie.

I'm giving this movie 4 out of 5 microphones.