Took the kids to see “Live Free or Die Hard,” last night. We had fun and you will too, if you remember to leave your credulity in the car.
Plot summary: Evil computer geeks shut down the country’s infrastructure and try to drain its financial resources. Bruce Willis stops them, destroying much of said infrastructure in the process.
The scene you’ve probably seen in the TV commercials, where Willis wrecks a helicopter by flinging (in a manner of speaking) a car at it, doesn’t come close to spiking this baby’s absurd-o-meter.
Let’s see, there’s Willis shooting himself, for strategic reasons. There’s Willis, with a 110-pound woman as a hood ornament, ramming an SUV into a concrete wall (he wrecks more vehicles in two hours, 10 minutes than Juan Pablo Montoya on a bender). The woman survives, of course, at least for a few minutes. She’s up and kung-fu fighting seconds later.
My and the kids’ favorite: Willis, in an 18-wheeler, is attacked by a fighter plane on a computer-generated, exploding I-695 (literally Inside The Beltway). The figher pilot has heat-seeking missiles. Willis has a CB radio. Willis wins, of course, and the pilot ends up ejecting and parachuting on to an exit ramp.
So we’re walking out of the theatre, laughing, and three college-age kids in front of us are beside themselves.
“That was the most insane movie I’ve ever seen!”
“That was better than (Die Hard) 2 and 3!”
They’re not wrong, I guess. I also guess they don’t need anything as big as a car to store their credulity.
