With its crashing cars, rattling machine guns, and trash-talking lead character, the trailer for Live Free or Die Hard (Len Wiseman, 2007) positions the movie as just another loud, action-driven summer blockbuster that was created strictly for male-viewing pleasure. As such, I figured that the movie would probably be just as ridiculous and unappealing as this summer’s other fare (see Transformers, Spiderman 3, and Ocean’s Thirteen, for example).
On the contrary, Live Free or Die Hard is much more fun than is expected–mainly because of the action sequences, which are, ironically, the very things that can be boring in other summer blockbusters. From what I can tell (and from what I’ve read), the majority of the stunts in this movie–there are many and they are frequent–are real, NOT computer-generated. This gives the film more of an “old-school” vibe like the first Die Hard from 19 years ago.
Regarding the stunt-work, The Washington Post summarizes it best:
“At a time when the action genre has come to be dominated by sleek, matte surfaces and set-’em-and-forget-’em computerized effects, ‘Live Free or Die Hard’ seeks to remind viewers of the simple, nostalgic pleasures of watching stuff get blown up and bad guys get smoked.”
Seriously, if you don’t want to think too much about a movie and just want sheer non-stop entertainment, fork over your $10.00.
Related posts:
2 Comments
Leave a Reply
Professor of film and Shakespeare. Advocate of social media. Lover of popular culture,
This just showed up in my RSS reader for some reason, but let me just say… I'm with you. Tons of fun. And I'm going to try not to give anything away here, but the last shot McClane fires in the movie was just fantastic—one of my favorite moments in the whole franchise.
I have no idea why it would show up either; it's such a old post. But yeah, good flick. Good times. =)