Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

Among the many big-name sequels of 2007, I was a little surprised when I heard Die Hard 4.0 was set to come out among the many other expected sequels. With 12 years since Die Hard: With a Vengeance was released, no one really saw this new chapter coming, especially among other June contenders like the Fantastic Four sequel or Ratatouille, not to mention the early July release for Transformers.

Live Free or Die Hard plays off of the same idea as the previous Die Hard movies, one man against impossible odds. So what could be done to expand on the Die Hard trilogy to make it more appealing? Make the odds even more impossible.

The stunts pulled off in this movie should never happen to an actual person, but as for detective John McClane, the impossible is made possible. Everything from a car flipping over onto McClain and being stopped by two cars that just happen to pull up on both sides of him, to running over a fire extinguisher to knock a sniper out of a helicopter with the water it shoots. The movie definitely delivers thrills, as well as some laughs through Matt Farrel, the panicky hacker sidekick played by Justin Long (Waiting, Accepted, and those Mac vs. PC commercials), and John's hard-nosed daughter Lucy McClain, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Grindhouse, Black Christmas). Not to mention Kevin Smith's cameo as a genius hacker known as The Warlock.

Aside from a few characters who supply a good comic relief, we have our villain played by Timothy Olyphant. A man who has hired a team of hackers to pretty much turn off the power to the entire country, and hack into any information they need at all, which makes him a complete badass. Probably my favorite line in the movie is when Olyphant's character calls John McClain "a Timex watch in a digital age." I'm eager to see Olyphant's take on Hitman, which is set to come out this October.

The best feature of the movie was how this old school cop is being put against a terrorist threat of the new age. The U.S. is put through a "fire safe", which is a slow and steady process of hacking which causes the entire country to lose power and all financial records. Pure modern chaos ensues, and Bruce Willis still kicks ass.