OK, I don’t want to get into a whole spoiler thing, so details will be very light here. Basically, I had a pretty good time with this. Moreover, I didn’t really like parts 2 or 3 much at all, so this was definitely a step upward, I thought. This might seem especially suspect because I’ve long been an advocate of scaling back action movies to more realistic levels—like the Bourne films, or John Singleton’s Shaft—but hell, I haven’t seen one of these gonzo ’80s type action flicks in a while, and a lot of the time it’s the steady diet of things that kills you, and not the occasional taste of one.
Is this a good “Die Hard” movie? Eh, mileage varies. Frankly, the actual attempts to replicate the Die Hard formula, such as having McClane yet again being estranged from a family member, kind of bored me. Some have also complained that McClane has now gotten away from his more realistic, ‘everyman’ hero role. Hell, though, this guy has killed hundreds of bad guys in his time. It’s only to be expected that he would be more confident in his abilities these days.
In fact, my favorite bits in the film came from moments where McClane actually seems to be enjoying his ludicrous adventures. After one opponent suffers a particularly spattery death, he laughingly shouts, “OH, NO!”, like a guy whose just delivered up a particularly epic “quality kill” (as my crowd used to call them) during a video game. This is definitely not a film that holds up to logical scrutiny, but hell, it was FUN. What’s wrong with that? (Although they were kind of pushing it by the end, there.) Again, I wouldn’t want to see five or six of these a year, but one every five or six years? Sign me up.
Meanwhile, I know there was a lot of complaining about the film being PG-13 instead of R. Whatever, dude. There’s a ton of carnage, and if there’s not a constant barrage of bloody squib effects, well, I’m not overly concerned. Frankly, I really don’t get the people who constantly complain that every action or horror movie doesn’t have an R rating. Yes, the first Die Hard was R, but it’s not like we’re talking the Friday the 13th series here. And again, several dozens of people must get whacked here, so it’s not like they skimped on the violence.
Bonus points for giving a nice paycheck to actor Tim Olyphant. I hope all those guys from Deadwood go on to make a good living. I also saw him while watching the first season of My Name is Earl last week, during an episode in which he played sort of a worst-case doppelganger of what Earl could have become if he hadn’t decided to get his act together.
