Wow, how far the die hard movies have come. This last installment, the 3rd sequel of the 1988 classic is the silliest and indeed the stupidest. So grab a beer, a warm couch, and a group of friends, this is a Couch Potato Thriller: One you'd want to talk through and joke with and not, I repeat, not pay attention to what implausibility is actually happening.
John McClane, the Bruce Willis charachter, is back this time to take down a group of virtual terrorists that have hijacked the entire nation and brought down it's complete infrastructure with a something something complete bullshit code. I'm no computer geek but I'm pretty confident that anyone who is an expert on computers knows that this scenario is impossible. The movie's creators, I think, are counting on the audience to be as ignorant as John McClane and to sympathize when he constantly asks the supergeeks (Justin Long and Kevin Smith) what they're talking about. This whole scenario brings about a cliche that happens all to often in sequels.
I call it the insurmountable enemy. I first noticed it in the Matrix sequels, when I realized halfway throughout the film that the enemy had been made so powerful, so resourceful, so incredibly gargantuan that any defeating of it would be implausible, silly, or just plain stupid. This happens here when apparently a couple of computer geeks can be so smart as to inflict an untold amount of damage, kill untold amounts of people, and yet be stupid enough to lose to one guy.
Now this one guy happens to be Bruce Willis. And Bruce Willis is a badass, true. But may I remind you that in the first Die Hard, Bruce Willis was not a badass. He was a human, and when he crossed a ground full of broken glass, he suffered, he bled. This Bruce Willis is a cartoon characther. He can jump out a speeding car going 100 mph and not break a single bone. He can fall out of two story window and only suffer so much as to grunt a little.
The bad guys too are just as implausibly limber. This one girl gets hit by a car at top speed and is plummeted through several walls and finally is crushed between the car and an elevator shaft. Is she hurt? Is she even stunned? No, she apparently has an adamantium skeleton like Wolverine. The fight doesn't even end there. She stil has enough going to fire off a couple shots.
And this brings up another recent movie cliche. The implausibly tough girl. This asian chick, Maggie Q, is at most 110 pounds. In any reality she wouldn't be able to bench over 50. But still, because she knows kung fu, she can kick ass and forcefully at that. Is any woman in any action movie nowadays not capable of easily beating up men twice their size?
The insurmountable enemy becomes laughable near the end when the bad guy deliberately forfeits any chance of winning by simply killing McClane, Long, or the daughter when he has the chance. Even though they have the ability to easily shut down the country, they apparently cannot break an encryption code by Long, therefore they need to keep him alive. But what does it matter anyway? You know the ending anyway, there's no suspense. We watch just to see what crazy implausible shit the creators will come up with next. This would be fine, of course, if the creators played the entire movie tongue and cheek. I just hate it when they want us to take the movie seriously by entering these scenes where the characters talk seriously as if they're in a serious movie. In one such scene we learn that McClane is divorced and his family hates him. Boooo! I happen to like McClane and I hate it in sequels when they take these characters we love and bash them to bits because they need some drama in their empty screenplay. As far as I'm concerned, the third and fourth installments of this series don’t exist and McClane went off in the sunset with his wife in the second film.
I'm not even done yet. Now I will talk about action in a movie and what makes it work, and what makes it not work. The best action is done in a long shot so the audience can actually see what's happening. This movie doesn't do that. We see a bunch of people shooting guns and alot of extreme closeups. Even when they are just talking: Still extreme closeup. When you're doing something physical you need more than just a face. Where's the scene! I can't see anything actually happening! action movies nowadays should move towards what Jackie Chan was doing. Actual choreography with long shots so we can see the strategy involved. A bunch of guns going off and people ducking behind embankments isn't good enough for me anymore. I want actual action. Not this pretend shit. I swear I don’t remember the last time a machine gun in a movie actually hit anything. Why do the characters even bother pulling those triggers? There are obviously no real bullets in the gun. A well choreagraphed fistfight is more exciting. Gunfights equals Boorriiinnng!
I will end this by saying this missed a fine oppurtunity for Justin Long to do some fine physical comedy, which he is definitely good at (see Dodgeball). This is one actor who should not be typecast as a nerd who sits around all day typing on his computer.
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