Last night I went to the midnight showing of Die hard 4 over at Mann’s Chinese theater.
As per the case with most geeky movies we left Damian’s house at about 10:30 to get in line for the impending glut of movie buffs waiting for the first glimpse of the return of John McClane!
Sweetly, the as of yet unnamed gal that has blessed me with her continuing presence joined me in this little endeavor late last night and all of us hiked our way up to the theater.
Traffic was bad. Giant SUV’s with chrome wheels seemed to have congested every street. I had no idea what was going on. The bass from various cars was thumping loudly, stylishly (albeit somewhat gangsta) looking individuals milled about on the corner in groups and here 4 of the whitest people ever tried to wade through the opposite flow of African American foot traffic.
After some interesting looks, and some crazy looking vehicles passed by we figured out what was going on. Evidently the BET awards were last night. So aha! Mystery solved.
Through the well dressed we moved to the other side of Hollywood Blvd where there SHOULD have been a line of people waiting to get in to see the movie.
There wasn’t.
I wouldn’t even call it a line. It was like a …dash (*rim shot*)
The theater was HARDLY packed when the movie started. That never bodes well, especially one that has such a fan base as Die Hard.
So my review of the film???
A pretty good episode of 24 with a lot more special effects.
I wouldn’t consider it a Die Hard movie, though it had the same character and there were some realllllly cool scenes of death and destruction.
But Die Hard always seemed to try and stay in some sort of reality (ignoring the end of 3). With CGI the way it is, it seems too easy to make things incredibly over the top, and unfortunately that’s what they did here.
I remember seeing the First Mission Impossible and seeing Tom Cruise get blown to the top of that train, all CGI’d and I though “uh oh”.
I knew this was going to happen. But still, there being great special effects, there is something to be said for making things look like practical effects EVEN if they aren’t. There are some angles, some explosions that take you right out of reality to a degree that you think you are watching a cartoon. You instinctively know they could never get a camera there, or an actor to do this or that and you register, subconsciously, the word “fake”. It may look cool. But…eh. I don’t know, for a movie like this it just detracts I think.
Plus, I have a problem with “hacker” movies to begin with. Essentially we all have to suspend disbelief that these guys can do what they are doing (which I doubt) without anyone else able to stop them. It’s the age old annoyance of ID4 where they upload a virus into the Alien mothership. Could they do that? Who know? I don’t! And NOT knowing how something is done, or what is going on, tends to make you a bit of a spectator rather than a involved participant.
The previous Die Hard films you got it. It wasn’t hard to understand. There was a safe, with money, and this whole thing was a ruse to get the money.
Second, there are red herrings and ruse’s but all to spring a terrorist who will give people money.
And of course 3rd, there is a simon says game/ scavenger hunt that has the good guys running all over town as a ruse, while the bad guys get…guess it…money.
This one they didn’t know what they wanted. They didn’t really explain the motivation of the bad guy, who you think is ruthless in certain moments and then you think, wait he doesn’t have any balls whatsoever. It just felt uneven.
I like Olyphant (the villian) but he lacked the script and just…the coolness factor of all the previous bad asses.
Kevin Smith was actually enjoyable (I didn’t think he would be from the trailers - which by the way, alot of the stuff in the trailer is NOT in the film).
I enjoyed myself. I know it seems like I’m smashing it a bit, but that’s only because it was sloppily written and just ….lazy to a degree. This is Die Hard. It deserves to be great. I had hoped they’d take the time to tighten the plot holes and intensify the action.
Is it worth seeing? Yes. I think so. But there were so many times I was like “What??? Why didn’t they do this??? Oh that’s convenient”
Not a bad summer pic, but definitely, in my mind not worthy of the Die Hard stamp.
