len wiseman's LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (2007)

i was honestly convinced this was going to be terrible. it's been twelve years since the overlong, racially patronizing, totally sweet Die Hard With A Vengeance sent the trilogy out with a relative bang, and in the meantime the ascendance of CG and superheroes has all but waylaid the hard-R action flick as John McTiernan's original helped define it twenty years ago. fucking awesome, then, that Live Free Or Die Hard is a gleeful, balls-out return to form for the series and the genre at large. Wiseman's action setpieces are thrilling and ridiculous (McClane himself seems to hold back fits of chuckling after every bit of carnage) and despite the PG-13 on the poster, the film never pulls a punch. (or gunshot. or semi-truck vs fighter jet battle.) there are a few misogynistic tendencies (this is, after all, a Manly Man Movie), but there are also some thoughtful preoccupations with machismo's place in the digital age that keep it "current" and self-reflexive without patronizing the audience too much. and though McClane is essentially a superhero himself by this point in the series, it's still nice to see an actioner that succeeds in its wild grabs at its genre's heyday. i went in expecting a neutered retread, and i left having seen the second-best Die Hard.