Live Free or Die Hard

What’s the Story?

John McClane (Bruce Willis) is back in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD, full of the retro rightness and righteousness that he's embodied throughout the action-packed series. This installment pits John against a digital world. Nemesis Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) is a former Department of Defense superstar upset that his warnings about a vulnerable security system and imminent "information war" were ignored. Now he's seeking vengeance by shutting down all computers, aided by some very athletic associates, his girlfriend Mai (Maggie Q), and the Parkour-inspired Rand (Cyril Raffaelli). So he can keep up, John is supplied with a hacker sidekick, Matt (Justin Long), whom Gabriel wants dead. Assigned to deliver Matt to Washington, D.C., John is soon communicating with FBI agent Bowman (Cliff Curtis). When the feds (along with NSA and Homeland Security) can't solve the crisis, John and Matt take up the slack. And John's answers tend to be violent: explosions, collapsing highways, "killing" a helicopter with a car. Throughout the movie, John displays his trademark crudeness (calling Mai nasty names), unflappable tough guy image, as well as his compassion and determination. Though he's committed, as always, to his "job" (still NYPD) as a means to individual identity, John doesn't claim a national or even an ideological affiliation.

Is It Any Good?

More than the second and third movies, Live Free grapples with John's cowboy machismo. Reviving an action-movie style that's quite opposed to recent technological acrobatics, comic book antics, or wire-work martial arts, Live Free or Die Hard presents John as a manly man who spends most of the movie filthy and bloodied, less desperate and sentimental than 24's Jack Bauer, but equally adept at handling "terrorists," fake or real. He's also great fun to watch, going all scrunchy-faced during amazing stunts.

Live Free gestures toward a flag-waving U.S. patriotism, set as it is around Independence Day. But it's focused on John's particular renegade-ness. Even if he shares Gabriel's irritation at slow-thinking government officials, John is absolutely heroic -- and always right.