Good/Bad Movie Review

Since the tenor of this blog is so far decidedly high-brow, I’ve opted to lower the bar a bit by posting the first in what may be a series of good/bad movie reviews. First, a definition. There are good movies, like if you said to me, “Chops, did you see P.T. Anderson’s new movie There Will Be Blood? That was a good movie.” There are also bad movies, such as “I almost walked out of Batman Forever. That was a bad movie.” Good movies make you think, contain good plots, good character development, and generally aid in understanding the human experience. Bad movies have no redeeming characteristics. While you don’t expect the qualities of a good movie in a bad movie, the bad movie also commits the cardinal sin of not being very fun to watch. In between a good movie and a bad movie is the good/bad movie. Good bad movies may not be original, or though-provoking. They generally have slim character development, preferring to rely on caricatures rather than fleshed-out human beings. What separates them from bad movies, though, is that they are fun. Also, they tend to push very slightly at the edges of the overused genre in which they are invariably trapped. There are lots of good/bad movies out there. Hollywood prefers to live in the huge expanse that exists between good movies and bad movies, that area commonly referred to as the lowest common denominator. So without further ado . . .

Live Free or Die Hard

Bruce WIllis is back in the fourth installment of the ever more improbably named Die Hard series. WARNING - Spoilers Ahead. Someone is blowing up computer geeks and the Feds want to know why. They enlisted local law enforcement, in the form of John McClane (Bruce Willis) to pick up computer hacker extraordinaire Matt Farrell (the typecast Justin Long, aka that guy from the Mac commercials). But first, we see McClane pull a guy from a car. Nefarious bad guy? No, just a dude making out with McClane’s college-aged daughter. The ensuing father/daughter spat demonstrates that being a great ass-kicker and a great parent do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. This is the first and last instance of McClane’s character development until about 2/3 of the way through the movie, but you hardly notice do to the rapid-fire deployment of stunts and special effects. But I get ahead of myself.

McClane goes to Matthew’s apartment, and the two exchange a few quips about how Matt plays with dolls (“action figures!”), setting the stage for the odd-couple buddy plot that will be the format for the rest of the movie. Then the shooting starts, with the bad guys trying to take out Mac-guy before the Feds get to him. McClane and Mac-guy kill most of the first bad guys, escape, and drive to D.C., where we find out that the head bad guys are trying to shut down America. McClane tries to pass the problem off to the Feds, but the bad guys are back, this time with a helicopter. In a maneuver that defies all laws of physics, McClane manages to launch a police car out of a tunnel, up a toll booth (yeah, I know, you have to see it to even picture it) and into the helicopter. In one instance of meta-reference, Mac-guy channels the audience by exclaiming that yes, indeed McClane just blew up a helicopter with a police car. McClane and Mac-guy make one more attempt to pass the problem off to overworked local law enforcement, but come to the conclusion that they are the only ones who can stop them. In the second instance of character development, we find out that McClane is so tough not because he can sustain repeated injuries any one of which would kill or cripple a lesser man (although he can) but because he does what he does because no one else will do it. That, my friends, is the moral of the movie. That's all we got.

I won’t detail the rest of the movie so as to leave some surprises, but a couple more highlights. We have a show-down between McClane and the head bad-guy’s equally invincible girlfriend. Her death provides McClane fodder for several one-liners against the head bad-guy. In fact, McClane really comes alive in the latter parts of the movie, shedding his bored, burnt-out cop persona from the beginning of the movie. McClane relishes killing the bad-guys, often accompanying a death blow with a one-liner or simply a sadistic laugh/grunt. McClane likes his job, so long as his job involves killing lots and lots of anonymous bad guys. In addition, Mac-guy grows a pair over the course of the movie, changing from whiny nerd to somewhat bad-ass nerd. He adopts McClane’s attitude, if not necessarily his physical prowess. Other highlights include a cameo by Kevin Smith as another uber-nerd, and a fighter jet blowing up a highway overpass.

So what should we take away from this movie? If you are asking that, you clearly didn’t pay attention when I explained the idea of a good/bad movie. What you take away is that you spent a couple of hours watching things blow up, and had a good time doing it.