Saturday, July 14, 2007

Killing Helicopters With Cars

We went out to see Live Free or Die Hard this afternoon, and both really enjoyed it. Yes, it's pretty mindless, and yes, you have to suspend your disbelief quite often, but isn't that what the genre's all about? Justin Long (aka "the Mac guy") was a great foil for Bruce Willis' John McClane, and vice versa. Willis brings just the right mixture of world-weary cynicism and inevitable heroism to the role, despite being long in the tooth these days. (I hope Harrison Ford can do as well in his return to the Indiana Jones hat, jacket and whip!) You pretty much know what you're going to get out of Mr "I'm a Mac" these days, and it was all right there, ready with an ironic one-liner at all the right moments. And Kevin Smith, as Hacker Supreme Warlock, living in his mother's basement with a life-size cardboard cutout of Boba Fett, was perfectly cast. He even managed to show a tiny bit of dramatic range, which somehow "Silent Bob" has never really afforded him!

High art, this movie was never in any danger of being confused with. But as a solid couple hours of entertainment, it definitely qualified!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I expected one extra bit of dialogue in the Willis/Long/Smith scene, which would have been entirely in character: when McClane tells the Warlock about his daughter, wouldn't the natural response from that character be "Is she hot?" (It also would've been a nice callback to the opening scene of the movie.)

Oh well... another thing for the "when I write a movie" list. :)