McClane censors himself for the kids

Live Free or Die Hard takes place during what appears to be a 24-hour period. And, hey, look! That’s CTU. The only thing missing is Keifer Sutherland shooting people in the kneecaps.

24, Fox’s runaway action series, is itself a sanitized, tech’d-out version of Die Hard, so it’s ironic that even the Die Hard franchise has come full circle. It’s ironic, and also very sad. Die Hard is the high-water mark of the action genre (Die Hard 2 is the low-water mark), but here, in its fourth entry, it’s a convoluted mess of computer parts, USB cables, brain-dead OnStar dispatchers, cell phone gadgets and John McClane, dinosaur supercop still trying to find his place in a police department that may not want him. Notice how in all four Die Hard movies we’ve never seen McClane (Bruce Willis) do any real police work — not a drug bust, felony arrest, speeding ticket or littering violation. Is he kept around in the off chance terrorists hijack an airport/office/city/computer network? They need a union for that kind of cop. They can meet at the Moose Lodge.

With Live Free and Die Hard target is a computer network. Apparently, the computer infrastructure of the entire United States government can be breached and destroyed with three keystrokes, because Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) does it, and in a suit straight out of Esquire no less. First he hacks the transportation grid, then the heart of economy (Wall Street), and finally major utilities. He has a theory and it’s called a Fire Sale: destroy the computer network of the country and it’s like hitting the reset button on our society. Of course, Tom will also steal some money — all money, in fact.

So in drops McClane, bald as Telly Savalas using Nair shampoo, tasked with bringing a computer hacker to Washington, D.C. The hacker, played by Justin Long, programmed a small portion of the Fire Sale without knowing the whole scheme, so he reluctantly helps McClane rustle through Gabriel’s plans.

I enjoyed parts of Live Free or Die Hard, but only because the grand stunts are kind of awe inspiring, or maybe just shock-and-awe inspiring. They're ambitious, too: a series of tunnel stunts multiply into larger and larger events until cars are spilling (literally) out of the tunnel. Largely, though, I’m disappointed that a modern-day McClane is nothing but a dopey cyber-cop protecting us helpless Internet surfers from computer spammers like Thomas Gabriel, a wimpy villain compared to A-list threats like Hans or Simon Gruber. And what’s with the intelligence community of the United States? The movie suggests that a Cheeto-fingered 8-year-old diverted from the Nickelodeon homepage could hack into the FBI database or post graffiti on President Bush’s MySpace page. Really?!?

What frustrated me most, though, were all the implausible computer hacking and physical stunts. Here’s an entire movie where characters hammer at keyboards and make terrible things happen. Here, I’ll try: “k;jsdsjldfnhouhsaeof jldfnoukdno[is.” I just shut down the New York City subway system, and it took one second to type. One more: “oqwhfmshsyfnfk.” That was me deprogramming Bruce Willis films from my TiVo unit. As if fudged QWERTY rows weren’t bad enough, in flies a jet that can hover with the agility of a hummingbird. And there’s McClane driving a big rig up a corkscrewing freeway of death that goes up and up and up — was the stairway to heaven not available? The jet itself is a cool trick, but the way it interacts with McClane’s world is a little hard to swallow. Not that I doubt the talent of American military pilots, but I do doubt they can fly a billion-dollar jet underneath an elevated freeway and shoot at a big rig in the process. Not even Top Gun attempted nonsense like that.

As for the rating — it’s PG-13 — I’m peeved. John McClane is an R-rated guy. Why censor him now after three R-rated adventures? As for the violence, the body count is just as high, if not higher, than previous Die Hard pictures. The only difference now is that brains, blood and guts aren’t spilling from the gunshot wounds. My biggest gripe, though, is with his tagline: “Yippee-ki-yay … (you know the rest).” Here, it’s truncated (and castrated) by a cleverly placed gunshot. Even 24's Keifer Sutherland gets away with something like a million utterances of the word "damn," and he's on TV.

Overall, Live Free or Die Hard breaks a lot of rules — including many of its own — but it’s a spirited adventure with John McClane, but not his best, nor his most believable. If you want something with some teeth check out TV’s 24, which is Die Hard lite, or Live Free or Die Hard heavy.