This Weekend’s Movies: “Live Free or Die Hard”

“Yippee-ki-yay motherfucker!” Is there a better one-liner in all of cinema? Let me anwser that for you: No there isn’t. The line is perfect. A blend of whimsical nostalgia for movie houses stuffed with kids in cowboy hats and cap guns as well as a hard-boiled promise of an imminent fight. It puts any adversary on notice: America is about to lay the smack down. It’s a clarion call for justice and action that belongs in the pantheon of great American quotes alongside “Give me liberty or give me death,” “A day that will live in infamy,” and “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” It should replace “E. Plurbus Unim” on our money (“Yippee-ki-yay motherfucker, I’m spending five-hundred buck on an iPhone.”) I suspect (though I cannot prove it) that if W had said this instead of “bring it on” when asked about the emerging Iraqi insurgency, Baghdad would today be a peaceful, democratic place with free elections, children playing in the street and Sean Penn installed as benevolent governor. Yippee-ki-yay motherfucker.

The line is reserved for the climatic scene of Live Free or Die Hard and isn’t even said in its entirety thanks to a PG-13 rating, yet its spirit permeates the movie, and that’s what makes it such an enjoyable summer action flick. Following up an act like the original Die Hard is tough to do, and the previous sequels foundered and disappointed. Die Hard 2: Die Harder was exactly the type of violent, mean-spirited forced march that one gets when Renny Harlin is let loose behind a camera. Die Hard with a Vengeance suffered from the kind of headache-inducing banter between Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson that made the Lethal Weapon movies such a chore, as well as that weird mid-’90s fascination with explosive devices (and had the unfortunate timing to be released post-Oklahoma City, when suddenly it all became real). But LFoDH has no race-riot scenes, slaughter of innocents or anybody being killed with an icicle through the eye (thanks for that, Renny, and by the way: I hate you). It’s pure Yippie-ki-yay motherfucker–bad guys threatening our way of life, and one (well, two) smart, resourceful people out to stop them. Load up on the popcorn and nachos, this is a summertime ride.

The movie has an older, but no less capable John McClane transporting a master hacker named Matt Farrell (played by Mac dude Justin Long) to FBI custody in DC. Seems Farrell is a part of a loose net of hackers involved in something nefarious. That something nefarious breaks bad when villain Thomas Gabriel launched a cyber-attack against the US information infrastructure with the codes written by Farrell and his cohorts. Gabriel covers his tracks by eliminating the hackers and McClane and Farrell soon find themselves with great big fluorescent bulls-eyes on their backs.

By the time McClane and Farrell reach DC, the attack is in full-swing and the FBI has responded in the usual fashion–they bark orders and throw bushels of money at the problem to generally no avail. After a fake anthrax alert sends them scurrying from their whiz-bang command center, they set up in a high-tech RV. Once the threat is revealed as a hoax, the FBI guys REMAIN IN THE FREAKING TRAILER! (one of the screenwriters must have been former Bureau). So while the intrepid folk from Famous But Incompetent mill around looking harried, McClane and Farrell set out to catch the bad guys. Wackiness (and some ass-kicking) ensues.

Live Free or Die Hard doesn’t have the crackerjack direction of John McTiernan that made the original so effective, but McTiernan at the helm would be a lot to hope for. After a mini-run of good movies in the late ’80s and early ’90s his career imploded with movies like Medicine Man, Rollerball, and Basic. Handing the Die Hard franchise back to him would have been a risky move. Plus I think he might be in jail now. Happily, director Len Wiseman, taking a break from dressing his wife up in leather catsuits and pitting her against vampires and werewolves, has taken a few pages from McTiernan’s playbook.

First, and most important, he keeps the movie light and fun. In a genre where action=sadistic violence, he eschews the ugliness of most modern action movies and sets about keeping the audience riveted to the edge of their seats.

Second (though no less important) he sets most of the action sequences in tight, confined spaces. Mush of what made Die Hard so effective was that the closed quarters of the Nakatomi skyscraper forced the action scenes to have an economical ingenuity (and no small amount of claustrophobia.) LFoDH may roam over several states, but the fight scenes tend to take place in ventilation shafts, tunnels, cramped rooms, and stairways.

Bruce Willis reprises the role of McClane with the relaxed assuredness of an old gunfighter strapping on his Sam Browne belt, and he plays the character with the same endearing mix of toughness and humor that made him a star in first place. Long, who’s kind of annoying in those Apple commercials, makes a good foil–a scared geek, forced out of his comfort zone of Internet chats and action figures into the real world (ahem) of machine gun fights and explosions. As bad guy-in-chief Gabriel, Timothy Olyphant brings the same barely-contained intensity that he did to the late-lamented Deadwood. With his laser-stare and grinding teeth he’s like a capacitor a couple of amps over its limit. His girlfriend (if you can imagine such a character being able to see past his perpetual seething to have a girlfriend) is played by Hong Kong model/actress Maggie Q, who, with her martial arts moves and way with automatic weapons, is as dangerous as any of the men in movie (though you have to wonder why she’d need to resort to violence–with her spiked heels and figure-flattering body armor she radiates enough sex appeal to stop time, and I’d probably hand over my ATM card and give her the PIN if she so much as smiled at me).

If Die Hard subtly played on the late ’80s anxiety over America losing its competitive edge to Japanese and German business rivals, LFoDH speaks directly to our fear that America’s infrastructure may be more fragile than we want to believe. The idea of compromised computers causing havoc to society may seem hopelessly Y2K, but the imagery of communications failing and bringing daily life to grinding halt conjures memories of post 9/11 New York, the massive blackout of 2003, and the government’s paralysis and helplessness in the wake of hurricane Katrina (thankfully, the movie doesn’t give us a Michael Brown character–that would just be too horrifying for a PG-13 rating).

Live Free or Die Hard also points at some uncomfortable truths about heroism when McClane disabuses Farrell of his misconceptions about the fate the befalls most heroes. “What do you get? An ‘attaboy!’ A pat on the back. A busted marriage. Kids who can’t stand you.” The movie might not be reaching for profundity, but it’s on to something here. Americans love a hero, but the organizations they serve loathe them. As Greg Boyington–a multiple ace in World War Two, and screw-up in much of the rest of his life–once put it: “Show me a hero and I’ll show you a bum.” John O’Neil, the FBI agent who’s anti-terrorism squad came closest to uncovering and possibly stopping the 9/11 attacks was thrown out of the Bureau. Melvin Purvis, basking in the fame and glory of killing John Dillinger, saw his reputation destroyed in a smear campaign orchestrated by his envious former boss J. Edgar Hoover. Purvis ended up committing suicide with the .32 Colt automatic Hoover had given him as a reward for taking Dillinger down. As Farrell points out to McClane, he’s still out there going after the bad guys, “That’s what makes you That Guy.” O’Neil was killed in the 9/11 attacks–his first day on the job as head of security for the World Trade Center–when he went back into the burning Tower One to try and get more people out. I’m pretty sure he never said it, but his actions had Yippee-ki-yay motherfucker written all over them.