Die Hard 4

(Movie Review)

I was at a friend's apartment the other night and we were deciding what movie to watch. My friend said he was in the mood to watch a mindless action movie. The name "Die Hard 4" came up.

Both of us agreed that "Die Hard 4" had been given bad reviews by everyone we knew, and yet the question remained, was it a good bad movie, or a bad bad movie.
Example: "Aliens Vs. Predator" was given terrible reviews by almost every professional and amateur reviewer, and for good reasons. And yet I remember going into the theater with a large size popcorn, a huge glass of coke, a couple of candy bars, and having a great time. A few weeks later I saw the remake of "Assault on Precinct 13", a truly awful movie which all the sweet drinks and salty food in the world couldn't save.
My friend got online and brought up Empire magazine review, and explained to me his system. "Empire magazine is the only place whose reviews I trust. If they give something three stars or more, I consider it worth seeing." The Empire review gave Die Hard 3 stars even. We decided to give it a go.

This is the ultimate pop-corn movie, in that a movie like this would have been unwatchable were it not for the invention of buttered pop corn and coca-cola (or pick your poison of choice). As it is, it provides a great excuse to stuff your face with goodies while being mildly distracted by all the explosions.

I should mention here that I've never been a huge fan of the Die Hard series. In fact as far as I can remember I've seen most of all of them, but I never sat through any of them in their entirety. It's impossible to watch any amount of cable TV without being exposed to the series, but I never seemed to have the attention span to make it all the way through without changing the channel (probably because I wasn't properly equipped with popcorn rations).

Although these Die Hard movies are not famous for their realism, my general impression is that this latest installment breaks the laws of physics to a degree as of yet unprecedented. (Might have to go back and actually watch all of the previous movies before I say that with authority though). It's like a cartoon, only it's for adults and it's live action.

They're obviously making a big deal of the updated 21st century themes in this movie, even going so far as to name it "Die Hard 4.0". But the idea of having computer hackers as the ultimate terrorists isn't quite as novel of an idea as the Die Hard marketing campaign would have you believe. If anything Die Hard is jumping on the tail end of the bandwagon. Movies about Hackers have been around for years now. I remember seeing a James Bond movie with evil hackers in it way back when I was in high school.

My friend, who is a lot more knowledgeable about computers than I am, did his best to keep his mouth shut during the movie, but would occasionally throw his hands up in exasperation when he couldn't handle all the disinformation being pumped out by this movie. I guess the moral is don't take the computer bits of this movie any more seriously than you would take the physics.

Whilst surfing around on the internet, my friend also came across this interesting article "From 2007: Five Movies That Prove MPAA Ratings Are Broken". The author of this article is expanding on the themes of Kirby Dick's Film: "This Film is not Yet Rated", in which Kirby Dick argues that the MPAA is very tolerant of violence in films, but not of 4 letters words and sexuality.
Not surprisingly, Die Hard 4 makes number 3 on his list:
The MPAA’s liberal stance on violence and conservativeness on foul language is fully on display here. It’s okay to show Bruce Willis graphically putting a gun into a wound in his shoulder and pulling the trigger, but having him say “Yipee Kay-yay Motherfucker,” as McClane’s character was meant to do is, of course, unacceptable. The film also featured a woman getting hit by a car, then plunging to a fiery death, dozens of graphic gunshot deaths, and a man getting ground up into a fine hamburger-y pulp. But no F-word and no sex means that kids are allowed to check this one out

I'm with him 100% on this. Not arguing for more censorship you understand, but for less. If movies like this can get a PG-13 rating, there's no reason why we have to make a sacred cow out of the F-word.

Final bone to pick with this movie:
This movie features the beautiful Magaret Quinsley (stage name Maggie Q). However because she is half Vietnamese, instead of playing the heroine or love interest of the hero, she gets to play the seductive Asian villainess.
Maybe I'm getting too sensitive on this, but it seems to me, in my 29 years or so as a casual movie viewer, that Asians are the last ethnic group that it's okay to consistently cast in villainous roles. I could list several examples of movies just in the past decade.

Add to this Bruce Willis's line after her demise: "Can I get another dead Asian hooker bitch over here right away?" I'm assuming the hooker part is a reference to Asian prostitutes in movies like "Full Metal Jacket" (or I don't know, you tell me) but somehow I can't imagine this kind of negative stereo-typing being casually applied to any other minority in a big budget Hollywood movie. Or am I being too sensitive on this one too?

Link of the Day
2007 Was Worst Year of Iraq Occupation

Die Hard 4: Movie Review (Scripted)