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Live Free or Die Hard (2007) (1 Viewer)

JediFonger

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the 1st DH had several great supporting cast INCLUDING the villain, which was extremely interesting and reasonably realistic and SMART above all things. tim o. was still in deadwood mode =P.

bruce didn't carry DH1, villain, and all of the great supporting cast, like that cop who is also family guy, etc. awesome supports made the film. of course, it doesn't hurt to have mct. behind the cam.

this DH had who else? lol totally laughable to be in the same movie as bruce. the action was just ho-hum. luc besson is an example of how well he can achieve this same genre and he does it with less talented actors like jason straitham, etc. i'm much more entertained by his action sequences than i am by this underworld guy. only benefit i can give the director is he is bedding kate b.... though i dunno wtf she sees in him.
 

TravisR

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Sure, the first movie had a great supporting cast. While this movie didn't have a supporting cast as good as that one, Timothy Olyphant, Justin Long, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Kevin Smith were all fine in their roles. Just because you don't think so, it doesn't become a fact.
 

ErichH

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No so bad. DH1 will always be the best. I'm having a hard time letting go of TO's charactor in Deadwood, but what the hell, it's a Bruce Willis action flick. Too bad about the PG rating. Greedy Bstds
 

Colin Jacobson

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But he wasn't really "alone". The filmmakers gave him Sgt. Powell as someone with whom he could interact. Powell may not have been in the same room with McClane, but he served that purpose...
 

Paul McElligott

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Willis didn't carry the first film by himself, but it didn't have anything to do with Reginald Veljohnson. Die Hard wouldn't have been half as good without a great villain. I think one of the main reasons that DHes 2 & 3 didn't measure up was: no Hans. (Should have thought of that before they dropped him off a building).
 

AaronMan

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I thought the villain in Die Hard 4 was particularly lame. No one respected him. At one point, it even looked like he was going to cry.

The villains make these movies. Sure, its nice to have Bruce Willis in there kicking ass, but there needs to be an opposing villian that can completely dominate him. In Die Hard 4, it seemed as if Bruce Willis was in control the entire time. I'd say this movie was more Bruce versus technology than anything else.
 

Matthew_Def

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Good action, but not really Die Hard. It was so incredibly ridiculous. I didn't care for the lead villian either, he was pretty dull, which is shame because that's half the reason I like Die Hard.

Justin Long was okay as the sidekick, he generated a few laughs. Couldn't really stand his daughter, you'd think she would respect her father just a little bit considering he has saved her mother twice, not to mention countless amounts of other people.

And why the hell did his pension suck? He should be a national hero by this point. Doesn't that garner him a few bucks? Maybe he should consider whoring himself out in the media.

Anyway I did enjoy it, just not as much as the others. I'm all for another, I just really like seeing where his life takes him. It was kind of sad to know he got a divorce (even if it was expected).
 

Kevin Grey

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"Whoring" himself out to the media (paid interviews, book and movie deals, etc) is really the only way he could have made money off his exploits. NYPD isn't going to pay him extra or anything. He's already a Lieutenant, which is pretty darn good, but he's also likely paying some alimony and a lot of years of child support as well.

And I didn't think the Lucy relationship was all that weird- they were just having a family spat when the movie started. She showed how much she loved him when she told bad guys posing as police to call her father when she was trapped in the elevator.
 

WillG

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If that couldn't even save the marraige of John and Holly, there's no reason to think that the daughter couldn't be pissed at him for some reason (at the start of the movie he is literally stalking her). Relationships aren't really McClane's forte it seems.
 

Inspector Hammer!

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Tim Olaphant was okay as the heavy, if anything he was funny to listen to and his plot, his 'fire sale" was just diabolical enough to carry us through another adventure.

Okay, I admit it, i'm a complete ass lol, I slammed this film and bashed it because of the rating and it became very clear to me about 5 minutes into it that I just didn't care, this was a DH movie and my temporary insanity melted away and I was returned to the proper state of mind to get maximum enjoyment.

Fave line from the entire film..."Mya? You mean that skinny asian chick who liked to kick people? Last time I saw her she was at the bottom of an elevator shaft with an SUV up her ass." :laugh:

Wouldn't be a DH film without an elevator shaft now would it? ;)

4 :star:'s out of 5 :star:'s for Live Free or Die Hard.
 

WillG

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Well, even though I did ultimately enjoy the film. I did kind of miss that signature graphic violence of the past three films. I wouldn't have minded a more mature villian in the vein of the last three films as opposed to a young techie. But it's not too big a deal I suppose.

It's a good movie and I liked it. But I still do wish they would have just gone with the R rating and filmed it in Panavision.
 

Yee-Ming

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FWIW, I enjoyed it. Didn't even think about the ratings hoo-ha, although now in retrospect the language was a little tame.

Having now read this thread from start to finish, could someone please explain to this non-techhead the hoo-ha about Panavision v. Super 35? I know briefly what they are, anamorphic v. flat: is the issue perceived image quality (or rather, lesser quality) in Super 35 after the full frame is cropped, as opposed to use of the entire frame of film anamorphically with Panavision? If so, shouldn't improvements in film stock make that less of an issue today, as opposed to the late 80s/early 90s when the first three Die Hards were shot?
 

Inspector Hammer!

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What I miss about Panavision and anamorphic, Yee, is the softness, the slightly out of focus backgrounds while keeping tight focus on the subject or subjects and more than anything I miss those glorious lens flares.

While the film rocked it simply didn't look like a DH film because all of those things which have become staples of this series were absent here.
 

Lord Dalek

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Well yeah, with the advent of the Digital Intermediate process (which just about all films made in the past 4 years utilize) you're skipping the optical printing phase which adds a ton of grain to the image (compare a more recent DI-d Super 35 film like Spider-man 2 to older non-DI'd ones like Top Gun and Terminator 2, you'll notice the difference in overall picture quality immediately).

On another note, is anyone still shooting full 4-perf, or is that dead?
 

Sam Favate

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Finally saw this last night and enjoyed it a lot. It fell apart a bit at the end for me, with the fighter jet and McClane shooting through himself (he would have lost an arm for cryin' out loud!), but the movie as a whole was very good and ranks with the previous three in the series (all of which I really liked). Thumbs up too for Justin Long who was great. Looking forward to seeing it again on DVD.
 

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