(bolding mine)
Die Hard, the anti-Star Trek!
Speaking of which, Tim Russ (Star Trek:Voyager’s Tuvok) played one of the nameless NSA guys. I was a little surprised that his tone and inflection were so similar to that of the uptight Vulcan.
I think at this point we are done with spoilers. 
Seems pointless to me. Even if they could figure out that what they did was part of it (it took Justin Long quite a while to figure it out and this was after folks tried to wack HIM in the beginning), what could they do? Supposedly power, telco and ground/sat communications were all down…and most of them didn’t strike me as the Bruce Willis type to run to West Virginia…
Well, I guess I could see missing a semi-truck and hitting bridges instead. What I can’t figure out is why the pilot needed to get within 20 yards to fire weapons that can go for miles. Even the onboard gun can shoot well over a mile. Also, firing at that rate and with shells that big I tend to think that the entire truck would have looked like scrap. However, this was one of the parts where I just started shoveling in popcorn and grinning a lot…and actually cheered when the fool flew so close that John could jump on the back of it (and later successfully jump off when the pilot ejected! 
). It was pure Die Hard…as was using a car to take down a helicopter…
Did anyone else think that Justin Long did a good job? I really enjoyed him in the movie. Was this is first full movie? Has he given up his gig with Apple?
-XT
Not by a long shot. He was in Galaxy quest, Dodgeball, Accepted, and several others. Here is his imdb profile.
Just saw it at a matinee. Loved It! Totally unreal & over the top - but so well done you just didn’t care. I was afraid Justin Long would awful up the movie - but he was really very good. More than held his own with Bruce Willis. He wins the battle of the summer geeks.
I’d see it again for all the good throw-away lines.
Yippie ki yay, motherfucker! Definately a light, frothy souffle. What makes these films (though I’ve only seen the latest one) more enjoyable than the equally unrealistic Mission: Impossible dreck with Tom Cruise is that Willis’s character is “just this guy” while Cruise’s character is “super secret agent Ethan Whatisname.” Cruise’s character just seems to engage in a lot of metaphorical chest thumping about who he is, etc., while Willis’s character (like James Bond) “just does his thing.”
One issue which wasn’t discussed in the film, that should have, IMHO, is that the stuff the hackers were doing would have had a global impact. I mean, the US gets uberhacked, and you can bet stock markets all over the world are going to be dropping faster than a stock broker out a 30 story window.
I could have done without the fighter jet, it should have been a chopper, IMHO.
One thing that I would have liked, would have been the following discussion between Willis and the bad guy over the walkie talkie.
Bad Guy: Give up.
Willis: Come on, you’ve seen the movies, you know how this stuff plays out. You make the offer for me to quit, I tell you to go fuck yourself, you threaten to kill me, then, later on, I show up and kill you. Why should I screw with a winning formula?
I saw it today. I had low expecations but it turned out to be much more entertaining than I thought it would. Yes, much of the action was ridiculous (especially the stuff with the jet), but it was still amusing and engrossing and Bruce Willis helped sell it a lot. He might be the best action movie star of all time. He’s always the accessible everyman but also can be a credible bad ass. His ability to still seem like a real person regardless of how ludicrous the action gets is a quality that few possess.
Saw it yesterday, and I loved it. It exceeded my expectations. However, I had no expectations at all that the plot was going to be realistic in any way, so that was a plus. I thought the one-liners were snappier than expected, as were the performances of the actors (as far as performing as unrealistic characters in an unrealistic situation goes).
For some reason, I was very pleased that Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who plays McClane’s daughter, looks like she could realistically be the child of Bruce Willis and Bonnie Bedelia.
It was the best action movie in a long time.
Blowing as much stuff up in the most spectacular fashion while completely ignoring everything having to do with real life physics and computers.
I give it five stars.
A friend of mine suggest that it would have been cool, in the scene where BW first talks to the bad guy over the radio, if instead of zeroing his retirement, the bad guy had done a Google search and found out what happened to Hans Gruber et al. :eek: <-Bad guy at that point.
Maybe I’ll see it, though I’m still pissed off about the rating. How much did it suffer from being PG-13?
Honestly, not much. They seemed to straddle the line beween PG-13 and R quite well, and got away with a lot. I was also upset over the PG-13 rating but once you get in there, it honestly ceases to matter.
I can’t wait to see this movie. To those who have already seen it, is there much in the way of gore? My wife is a little squeamish and I don’t know if I should bring her to see it with me. Is there anything along the lines of, say, DH3, where the German(?) chick slices up some guy’s neck?
–FCOD
I don’t think it suffered either, but I rewatched the original Die Hard again over the weekend and I was actually surprised about the amount of casual swearing in it. Bruce Willis must have uttered some derivitive of fuck every couple of minutes.
But I don’t think the lack of casual swearing hurt Live Free or Die Hard at all. The movie moved too fast for it to matter.
EDIT: And most of the gore takes the form of the bloodless gun battles you often find in the Bond movies (and most of Die Hard 1 to be honest).
There were a few gory scenes, no doubt. But nothing too over the top. My own wife isn’t a big fan of folks getting hacked up, and she made it through the movie just fine…FWIW. Most of the REALLY gory stuff was more along the lines of psychological…they show you a grim situation (so as not to spoil it, lets say like in Indian Jones with the huge stone ball rolling down toward the good guy) and then let you THINK you are seeing something gruesome (like large stone ball rolling over bad guy…but all you see is a brief smear of blood and quick howl of pain…then silence). That kind of thing.
Or just a bunch of schlubs getting gunned down as usual in these kinds of movies.
-XT
Thanks guys. I figured as much because of the PG-13, but PG-13 is becoming more and more like R used to be, so I thought I’d ask.
–FCOD
I thought that killing the geeks merely meant that the take would be split into fewer, but larger percentages. I really liked Bowman, the put upon FBI guy who has to deal with moronic, incompetent security weenies. I would have like the movie better if he could have come in sooner and joined in the last gun battle. He was also in Deep Rising, you know. 
I will say that the film could have used a few scenes of Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s exposed boobies, which you’re sadly not going to get in a PG-13.
I saw it yesterday afternoon, and just assumed that they killed the geeks to eliminate any chance of being traced back via them (or their equipment: note that the explosions were focused on the computers). Isn’t it standard bad guy CYA to kill the minions who do your dirty work so that no one can talk?
I, too, enjoyed this iteration – more than I thought I would, and I have the trilogy boxed set. I agree that the PG-13 rating didn’t hurt it much, though I’m also with those who were disappointed to see it.
I think what made my boyfriend and I snicker the most was the idea of any government agency having rooms full of such polished, high-tech gear – especially the FBI.
This is totally what I was thinking. I mean they gave it the perfect setup with the quick shot of the pilot landing nearby after parachuting out.
Speaking of which, how does one send a signal which blows up another person’s computer? And should I be worried as I sit at my keyboard typing this?