Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Directed by Len Wiseman
John McClane is back and badder than ever, and this time he calls on the services of a young hacker in his bid to stop a ring of Internet terrorists intent on taking control of America's computer infrastructure.
4 connections found
View:
4 films that influenced Live Free or Die Hard
What critics say influenced Live Free or Die Hard
But the work done by stuntmen - with heads shaved to match Willis' - is amazing, and the many action set pieces are choreographed with breath-taking efficiency by director Len Wiseman ("Underworld").
With his action-oriented experience behind the camera in the “Underworld” franchise, Len Wiseman is an inspired directorial choice.
I know they have their fans, but to me the two Underworld movies are little more than inferior shameless rip-offs of far superior genre fare.
To avoid any controversy, the terrorists in the film directed by Len Wiseman ("Underworld"/ "Underworld: Evolution") are not even Muslim Arabs.
There isn't much of a plot to "Live Free or Die Hard," which was directed by Len Wiseman (of "Underworld" and "Underworld: Evolution" fame) and written by Mark Bomback: Like so many contemporary action pictures, it's mostly a series of situations strung together, manufactured occasions for car chases, butt kickings, and florid explosions.
Director Len Wiseman, confidently stepping up from the smallish budget "Underworld" films to mega-budget Hollywood mainstream, opens the film crisply, and he effectively escalates the action from the sinister threat of keyboards clicking and data flashing on video screens to guns blazing and buildings blowing up.
As it turns out, re-watching the first three Die Hard films in anticipation of this new one is absolutely the last thing one should do - as the movie has exceedingly little in common with its predecessors and instead comes off as a cinematic cousin to such watered-down, egregiously slick contemporary action movies as xXx and Bad Company.
But no: look back at Die Hard again, even after your senses have been stunned by Bad Boys II and Independence Day, and it doesn’t look dated, and it’s certainly not boring.
(Whether or not he appropriated this gag from The Italian Job (2003) or from the playful warlock antics of Jack Lemmon in Bell, Book and Candle (1958), it does create an effective mess.)