Sunday, July 29, 2007

Live Free or Die Hard, but don't waste time!

Boy, oh Boy, I went to ‘Live Free or Die Hard’ this morning, and I’m like ‘Do you call this an action flick?’ It must’ve been categorized as Sci-Fi!

I know what to expect from Die Hard movies. They’re generally full of action, Hollywood-masala, larger-than-life stunts et al, but man… this was way over the top. Live Free or Die Hard, which is also Die Hard 4, comes after a decade in the Die Hard series and was also much expected, but I didn’t believe myself when I saw user rating of 8 on ten in IMDB. I just had to watch this flick. 8.15 am show in the morning did not matter.

I try not to take my logical lens with me while watching pure action flicks – Rambo series, Terminator series or Die Hard series etc, because you aren’t supposed to watch these flicks looking for logic. You watch them for their speed, the special effects, the stunts, and larger-than-life heroes and villains. That said, this does not mean than that you become dumb for the two hours while watching these flicks. Die Hard 4 is masala taken to the very next level. It’s not just beyond reason. It’s beyond your wildest imagination, and beyond the wildest absurdity.

Some spoilers start here -->

Our hero is an old school hero - the kind who loves fist-fights, guns, car races and blood. But he is not a geek, a tech-wizard, and he does not understand computers. The villains are everything our man isn’t. You get the idea. Villains hacking into everything – traffic network, banks, nuclear stations, TV stations, getting direct lines to F-16 pilots etc are to be expected in these action flicks, but what you can’t stomach is our hero escaping from F-16s and Helicopters and laser-guided missiles and instead destroying all of them. And wait a minute; did someone say there was a ‘plot’? I wouldn’t call some junkies putting an entire country to jeopardy by hacking into computers and our old-school hero rescuing everything single-handed a plot. That’s way over the top for me.

<-- Spoilers end here

All said, you have to give something to this movie – it’s fast, it’s packed with stunts, some funny dialogues, some sentimental-crap and overall fast-paced action. It is one of the ‘yeah, don’t have much to do this afternoon… can watch this flick for once’ movies, but I, for one, couldn’t really stomach the absurdity in the name of a movie.

4 Comments:

At Sunday, July 29, 2007 1:38:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You call it a Sci fi i call it a action comedy

 
At Sunday, July 29, 2007 2:14:00 PM, Blogger Govar said...

Hehe. That's nice too!

 
At Monday, July 30, 2007 12:19:00 AM, Blogger Bhaskar Sree said...

Thanks Machi... you saved me some money!

More importantly... the possible frustu-after-effects :-)

 
At Tuesday, July 31, 2007 6:43:00 PM, Blogger Jam said...

Hey there Pradeep, Govar and Bhasky,

I remember reading this in an interview or a website somewhere, "Die Hard 4.0 is Bruce Willis' last attempt at trying to make an action movie and establish himself as one of the immortal action heroes that Hollywood has ever seen."

Now, this being said and going be recent trends in Hollywood Action flicks, especially ones like MI-3, T-3, Rocky Balboa, what else can you expect from a hardened Hollywood action veteran like Bruce Willis other than cars, bikes, choppers, et al flying all over the place, crashing and burning.

As far as scripting goes, it has always been Hollywood style to kind of give the whole Artificial Intelligence thingie an amazing twist and make it sound like computers are pretty much the smartest things in the world, since man discovered fire, or the wheel or something like that.

Am surely gonna watch the movie, if not for anything, just to kind of figure out how far the old fuddy-duddy Bruce Willis has gone to keep his action hero image intact.

Cheers.......Jam

 

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