Live Free Or Die Hard vs True Lies

Live Free or Die Hard is rated PG-13, so right after John McClane says “Yippee-ki-ay, motherf”, we hear a gunshot. I assume that offensive “ucker” is what would have driven the movie up into R territory, because Live Free or Die Hard suffers no lack of explosions, crashes, gunshots, missile fires and extreme martial arts stuntwoman beat-downs. It’s a good time to be thirteen.

John McClane is still a cop in New Jersey. He’s divorced now, and his kids are grown (does he have more than one kid? I thought he did. He’s only got one who made it to the sequel, so if nothing else, he’s playing favorites.). His daughter is a student at Berkley; when we meet her, she’s being stalked by her dad on a date. Young McClane (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is estranged from her father, and tells him they’ll start speaking again when she’s ready. Later in the movie, she’ll be ready.

McClane has an odd task for this movie: transport a computer expert from Jersey to Washington D.C. I say it’s an odd task for two reasons: First, really? Is that how it works?  A cop from New Jersey transports someone all the way to D.C.? There’s not any kind of hand-off to officials in the next state? Does John McClane have nationwide jurisdiction (a few of you just muttered, “He should.”)? Secondly, didn’t Bruce Willis just do this exact same thing a couple movies ago in 16 Blocks? No matter, he’s doing it, and it’s not going to be easy. As soon as he meets the kid (Justin Long), we know it’s going to be a bad fit, because the kid is Movie Young, and McClane is Movie Old. Movie Young means you chain-drink Red Bulls, listen to screamo music, and type crazy fast without ever using the space bar or mouse. Movie Old means you like classic rock music, tuck in your shirt, and hate things like cell phones, computers and people in their twenties. This would bother me more if the roles weren’t played by Willis and Long, both of whom do a great job and have easy buddy-movie chemistry. Willis, of course, regularly rocks in roles that don’t require him to be John McClane, and since John McClane is his most rocking character to start with, it’s a foregone conclusion that he’s great in the movie, not too self-congratulatory or self-parodying, but both when necessary.

The action in Live Free or Die Hard is flawless. I could never tell when something was a CGI, miniature, or full-size blow-up. It’s all pretty much badass, especially McClane driving a semi up a collapsing overpass (while being shot at by some kind of crazy Terminator Stealth jet). Another scene, a fight between McClane and a compu-terrorist played by Maggie Q, borders on ludicrous (read: is actually ludicrous), with the latter taking an astonishing beating, but never even sweating, like she’s Lady Deathstrike. At one point, she’s hit by an SUV and rammed through a cinderblock wall, and it really pisses her off. Her boss, Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant joining the tradition of well-dressed, articulate yuppie movie villains) has created a “fire sale”, which is basically Y2K for procrastinators. John McClane is more angry about it than afraid of it, something he and I have in common.

Live Free or Die Hard was directed by Len Wiseman, and has one of those crazy “based on” writing credits that took up most of the opening sequence (and includes what I’m pretty sure is a magazine article). Wiseman has only directed the Underworld movies (and has more planned), so Live Free or Die Hard is a bit of a step up. It’s not edited spectacularly well, but the blowin’ up part of “shit blowin’ up” is awesome, and Mr. Willis is fit, funny and Movie Old in the best sense of the term. He f—kaboom!—uckin’ rocks.

Oh, and before I forget: Shut up, Kevin Smith.

Because Live Free or Die Hard’s legacy goes back to one of the most ripped-off movies of all time, Die Hard, it gets a pass in terms of originality. Having said that, it does remind me a bit of True Lies.

True Lies, like Live Free or Die Hard, is full of old-school organic special effects, a kidnapped daughter, and a hero who is maybe getting a little fed up with his action-packed life. It’s also near-cartoonish in its levels of excitement and adventure, expecting us to go along with every Bond-ian tableau. We almost do.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis star as Harry and Helen Tasker, an affluent suburban couple with boring jobs. He’s really a spy, and soon she will be too, whether she knows or likes it or not. It was directed by James Cameron, so everything is huge and looks incredible, and unlike most action movies that also go for laughs, True Lies is actually pretty funny.

The heart of True Lies is actually its heart, which is rare for a movie like this (the same can be said, mostly, of the Die Hard movies), and for that we can thank Jamie Lee Curtis. Other directors might have put Schwarzenegger with a less age-appropriate costar (perhaps the movie’s femme fatale, Tia Carrere), but Cameron considered the characters and story first, and ended up with a screen pairing for Schwarzenegger that provided him with more chemistry and actual human warmth than he ever had before or since. There are two scenes that are always discussed about Curtis in this movie: her trip over a bridge, dangling from a helicopter; and her comical dance/striptease while undercover as a prostitute. My favorite moment is just before that, when a nerdy, over-dressed Helen catches herself in a mirror and makes last-second changes to her hair and outfit. It’s an awkward, funny scene with a sexy punch line. Don’t get that in every movie. I know, I’m gushing over Jamie Lee Curtis, and it’s probably a little much. You better hope I never review A Fish Called Wanda on here; you don’t know from gushing.

By the end, True Lies has probably overdone it with the special effects. Too much action? From a movie that features a skyscraper chase on horseback? Yeah. True Lies is one of those movies with like ten endings. Unlike Die Hard, though, it never got a sequel, so Cameron probably figured he better blow as much stuff up as possible before the credits rolled.

Live Free Die Hard: B
True Lies: B+