Live Free or Die Hard is… Good?

From what I’ve been able to gather in terms of opinions across the Internet, it seems that the 4^th installment of the John McClane Adventures, more commonly known as “Live Free or Die Hard,” is actually quite good. This is pretty shocking, considering that all of the sequels that have been released thus far have been disappointments through and through. The Die Hard trilogy is an example of what action movies should be, and even though the sequels are exceptional and above most of the stuff that’s been pumped out of Hollywood for the past 10 years, the original stands its ground firmly as the seminal action movie. You just can’t beat it.

So, does “Live Free or Die Hard” do its name justice?

The zeitgeist seems to be a Yes and No, but mostly Yes. The PG-13 rating should be taken in the same context as a wolf in sheep’s clothing; the movie is hardcore, even though that John’s delightful potty mouth seems to be absent this time around. It seems that this McClane, 12 years after saving New York from economical catastrophe with Samuel L. Jackson in “Die Hard With a Vengeance,” has been upgraded to the action heroes the original movie took a hot piss on. What I’ve always liked about John is that he’s the antithesis of the big action heroes of the 80’s, and subsequently the 90’s. In many regards, what I read in some review I read earlier seems to make the point very clearly. There’s this guy who looks like McClane and operates like McClane doing crazy practical, no-CG stunts and doing the signature “yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.” But there’s no real sense of McClane being way over his head. He’s not hungover or pissed at his wife or whatever. “Live Free or Die Hard” seems to be, sadly, the anti-Die Hard.

And still, it’s probably going to be one of the highlight summer blockbusters of the year. That’s because at the core of it all, the times can change but Die Hard continues to be the best action movie since it came out, and all sequels, as weak as they can be as compared to the rest of the canon, are still way better than anything else out there.

We’ll see what happens, or at least I will, when “Live Free or Die Hard” premieres July 6 in Panama.