The gasping, grunting and oozing hard-body slab that muscles, and sometimes crawls, through Live Free or Die Hard (released in Taiwan as Die Hard 4.0) sure looks like John McClane. Older if apparently no wiser, the blue-collar super-cop from the Die Hard franchise has lost his hair, his foul mouth and apparently his nicotine itch, but he still has the same knack for trouble, the adrenaline-pumping, cheerfully anarchic kind that causes cars to ignite, bodies to fly, eardrums to pop and hearts to race and gladden. He's also lost his sneer, but sneering is cheap, and movies are expensive, especially when your star has pushed past 50 and slid off the power lists.
A lot has happened in the 12 years since Bruce Willis yippee-kai-yay-ed in Die Hard With a Vengeance with a glowering Samuel L. Jackson in tow. During that time Willis' star has expanded and collapsed through hits and duds and plenty of personal off-screen noise. The world has changed too, of course, and with it the action-flick coordinates: for one, Arnold Schwarzenegger runs California, while the sober, nonwisecracking likes of Matt Damon's Bourne rules the bad-boy roost. For another: Willis has become an increasingly appealing character actor, the kind who punches up a scene or two (Alpha Dog, Fast Food Nation) or an entire movie (16 Blocks), mostly by playing it not so nice and very easy.
Life or age or something has mellowed Willis. He no longer enters a movie like God's gift, as he did almost two decades ago in the first Die Hard, lips pursed as if he alone were in on the joke - which, given the fat salary he was earning, perhaps he was. In Live Free or Die Hard he enters swinging, fist smashing through hard glass and sinking into soft flesh. He's making a point and so is the movie, namely that McClane (and Willis) is ready to earn our love again by performing the same lovably violent, meathead tricks as before. And look, he's not laughing, not exactly, even if the film ends up a goof.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF FOX
An unexpectedly funny goof, at that, despite everything, including the mayhem and somewhat creepy plot. The screenplay attributed to Mark Bomback, who shares the story credit with David Marconi, has the whiff of multiple writers, as action-driven productions generally do. It originated with a 1997 story (dubiously titled A Farewell to Arms) by John Carlin in Wired magazine about the potential for a cataclysmic, nation-crippling "information war," which mutated and stalled, picking up new writers and equally doubtful names (WW3.com, Die Hard 4.0). Somewhere along the development line, the real world intruded, which is why the original idea about an information war now includes a plausible-sounding or at least not entirely outlandish hook to Sept. 11 - hence, the creepiness.
In most Hollywood action movies, references to Sept. 11 as well as to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are often tacked on or displaced, used for decorative flag-waving or scenes of torture. Live Free or Die Hard tries to engage the real world more directly than most studio-made fantasies, with a logic-defying plot involving a disgruntled government security expert. That would be Thomas Gabriel, who seems partly inspired by the counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke and partly informed by Bill Gates and is wholly played by the pretty Timothy Olyphant, dressed in black and wearing Maggie Q on his arm. Olyphant has many charms, but annihilating menace is not one of them. Willis nonetheless keeps any incredulity in check along with his sneer.
Despite its jaw-jutting title, with its evocation of revolutionary America and radical individualism, Live Free or Die Hard keeps a tighter rein on McClane, dialing down his man-against-the-world attitude to a low hum. He's still more or less alone, at least existentially, though, as per the action playbook, he quickly picks up a sidekick and audience surrogate in the hacker impersonated by Justin Long (flicking between annoyance and amusement).
But McClane is also unequivocally playing for team America, helping the FBI and its no-nonsense, supremely capable deputy director, Bowman (Cliff Curtis), who runs the sillily named cyber division with blinking monitors and scurrying minions. Heroic in deed and in acquaintance, Bowman knows to side with McClane, saving his contemptuous looks for the guy from Homeland Security.
Nothing on Len Wiseman's resume - he previously directed the two Underworld flicks, wherein the Goth kids really are vampires - suggests that he could wrangle both Willis and this new film's nerve-jangling action to such satisfying effect. At least on the second count he has received terrific help from a sprawling cast of stuntmen and women (and the stunt coordinator Brad Martin), who do a great deal to advance the film's old-school mayhem. The use of Parkour during several fight scenes is particularly tasty, proving that when cinematic push comes to shove, the French, who originated this ultra-cool rough-and-tumble, which finds performers bouncing like balls from wall to wall, rooftop to rooftop and many hair-raising points in between, are definitely in the coalition of the willing.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist