Before I begin, I thought I would mention that I am a huge fan of Die Hard. I have watched the first movie 1,239 times and could probably do a one man play Off Broadway on it. I even liked the second one, not as much, but it was fun. The third one was a rip off of a Starsky and Hutch episode from the 70s, but was worth sitting through. But the fourth one I had no intention of seeing. The commercials just turned me off. They made me feel they had forgotten what made John McClane a fan favorite: He was just a guy– an ordinary guy thrust into extra-ordinary circumstances–that rose to the occasion. But in the commercials for the third one, it looked like they had turned him into a cookie cutter cut out of the Hollywood action hero like Schwartza-howz-you-spell-it or Stallone or Van Dame or Even Steven “Couldn’t act if my life depended on it, and my martial arts are just shit I made up, and that guy on Mad TV spoofing me is more entertaining than I could be if I lit my self on fire and jumped off the Empire State Building into a Dixie cup filled with Bacardi 151 and the best movie I ever made, was when I died in the first 5 minutes (Executive Decision)” Segal.

But as I was watching Live Free or Die Hard, I thought, “this isn’t so bad. It’s got Bruce; it’s got the kid from the Mac commercials wise cracking, loads of action. Ok, he blows up a helicopter by jumping a car into it. We can get past that, it’s Schwatz-a-hooie-esc, but that’s ok.” But I kept watching. With out going into too much detail, the bad guys, tap into the Air Force computers and send a jet after McClane. An Air Force Jet, with an Air Force pilot. Not one of the bad guys flying a jet, but the “real McCoy.” Not just any jet mind you, one that can hover. (They didn’t say it was a British made Harrier, which to my knowledge is the only hovering jet our military has, but it was an F-something, with a rotor thing built into the tail. The Harrier uses jets to hover.) ANYWAY, this American pilot proceeds to blow up pillars holding up freeways to kill MacLean, destroying bridges with cars on them. But then they did something that, to quote Eric Burden, “really blew my mind.” They completely ripped off the Harrier Jet sequence from James Cameron’s True Lies where AH-Nood rides on the nose of the Harrier.

Order Live Free or Die Hard from Amazon.

Randy Otteson

Editor’s note: It has been commented that the protagonist’s name was misspelled. As editor, I take full responsibity since I know full well that Randy can’t spell worth a darn. It has since been corrected and a kudos goes to Bryon Quertermous for noticing it.