Live Free or Die Hard

Indestructible police detective John McClain saves the world from cyber-terrorists.

Short of Bruce Willis not returning, Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth entry in the series, couldn’t be more removed from its predecessors. The original theme of an everyman forced into an impossible situation is gone, replaced here by a superman who seems compelled to seek out danger. Ditto the previous entries relentless attempts to ground their action in some semblance of reality. In the original, when Willis is on the roof ready to jump off with only a fire hose wrapped around his waist, you don’t think it’s ridiculous, you think it’s suicidal.

And that’s the difference. The script for Live Free or Die Hard doesn’t bother to try and get you invested in Willis’s character. It’s banking on the familiar name from the previous films and does away with any characterization or emotional arc, thus turning what had been a great character into a one-dimensional superman.

Take the one-liners for example. In the earlier movies they worked because of the tremendous tension the scripts were able to generate. They seemed like a believable way for Willis’s character to try and maintain his sanity while dealing with unbearable stress. Now, without the tension, the one-liners seem forced, and many fall flat.

All of this is compounded by the film’s PG-13 rating. In the earlier pictures, one of the ways they directors grounded the picture was through the selective use some fairly graphic material, like the scenes with Willis’s glass-ravaged bare feet in the original. In Live Free or Die Hard, men are mowed down by powerful machine guns with no blood, women get thrown around rooms with little more than a few scratches, and the lead character—well, like I said, he’s a superman.