Movie review: Live Free or Die Hard

Anyone familiar with the Die Hard series (Die Hard, Die Hard 2: Die Harder and Die Hard 3: Die with a Vengeance) and Detective John McClain will appreciate what I am about to say about this movie.

Yipee-Ki-Yay-Mutha-F*cka!!!

OK, the trailers show a fair bit of the shite that gets blown up BUT there is probably twice that left to be seen. The premise of the movie (a twist on cyber-terrorism) is actually believeable. I mean, there will be naysayers that poo-poo the possibility of anything in this movie actually happening. Hmm. Oh really? Let's do a quick examination of that thought.

• Almost all of Ontario, some bordering states and a good chunk of New York and the eastern seaboard were enveloped in a power blackout that originated as a backlash loop out of the US in a system that should never have allowed it to happen.
• The World Trade Center Towers we taken down and out.
• An airplane crashed into the White House.
• Don't get me started on how many times the various agencies, especially the Pentagon, has been broken into.
• NASA was compromised.
• Paris Hilton's sidekick was cracked.

Ok, I concede the last one was purely put in to get your attention and some more web hits but you get my point. So many things that have been impossible in theory before have been proven possible in action later. So, can a genius making a concerted effort with enough firepower and financial backing and will do what this psychopath does in the movie? You bet your ass he could. Now, that would depend on if the various systems are as stupidly set up in real life as it is in the movie. Uhm, do I have to bring up the blackout again? Californians are all too familiar with the failure of connected systems to argue this point.

Anyhow, back to the movie. It is worth the money to see on a big screen. Bruce Willis is still the guy you want guarding your back when it hits the fan hard. If he wanted to do one last Die Hard movie, I would drop the coin to see it too. Is this the best of the series? I'd say no because the first one was sheer genius, the second one was wicked thrills (and the origin of his catchphrase), and the third one had the supercool gent in Samuel L. Jackson and the across city puzzles to work out. Unlike the Lethal Weapon series, I pretty like all four equally.

The added bonus in this one is the comic stylings of the guy we all know and love/hate as Mac in the Apple commercials. Oh yeah, and a cameo/small part by none other than Kevin Smith himself. So, go out, enjoy, and try to stay out of harm's way. You never know when Big Brother is watching you and waiting to take you down.

Peace.