"Live Free or Die Hard"

Implausible. Over-the-top. Absurd. All of these modifiers can be used to describe "Live Free or Die Hard". But I'll add another one...lots of fun.


Yes, John McClane's fourth go-round with terrorists is nothing more than a silly cartoon, but it has a sense of playfulness that's been missing from a lot of recent screen adventures. Action thrillers have gotten so straight and serious (think the Bourne films) over the past few years that sometimes we fear the hero cracking a smile would hurt him more than anything the worst villain could inflict.


No worries about that here. "Live Free or Die Hard" allows Bruce Willis ample opportunity to crack wise amid the explosions, beatings, and shootings -- just as he did in the previous three entries in the Die Hard series (although the less said about the last one, Die Hard With a Vengeance, the better). But this time he has a partner in jest...a smart-assed computer hacker named Matt Farrell (Justin Long).


Seems Matt is one of several hackers who were hired to help former government agent Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) create a program that could take down the entire American infrastructure -- transportation, electrical, gas, you name it. ("It's called a fire sale," Matt explains. "Everything must go.") Gabriel's motives are murky (ultimately it's all about -- surprise, surprise -- money), but he's offing all the hackers he put together, so Willis is tasked with transporting Matt safely to Washington where he can be questioned about Gabriel's plans.


After barely escaping Gabriel's assassins in Matt's apartment, the two unlikely partners arrive in D.C. just in time for all the traffic lights to go out. In the midst of the chaos, Gabriel discovers Matt is in Washington and sends his henchmen out to kill him -- and as we all know, protecting regular folks is what John McClane was born to do.


That includes (but is not limited to): driving a car into a helicopter, driving an SUV into an elevator shaft (with Gabriel's karate-chopping squeeze attached to the hood), escaping numerous fireballs, and barely hanging onto the wing of a Harrier jet as it takes out an elevated roadway in suburban Baltimore. Did I mention the movie is absurd and over-the-top? Yes, I think I did.


(As if things couldn't get loony enough, we're treated to a cameo by filmmaker Kevin Smith as an overweight hacker who hides out in his mom's basement...then again, maybe that's not so hard to believe after all.)



But no matter how often director Len Wiseman and writer Mark Bomback put credibility through the shredder, McClane helps ground the silliness. Willis' natural earthy demeanor has never served a character better than this everyman cop (who, truth be told, feels less like an everyman and more like a Superman this time around) and even though it's been 12 years since he last played him, McClane fits Willis like a glove. The big joke of the movie is that he's a "Timex cop in a digital age". But with Willis in McClane mode, he proves that the world can change all it wants, but a good old-fashioned ass-kicking never goes out of style.