Live Free or Die Hard (2007) - Blu-ray Review

Review:

*Originally written December 25th, 2016*


Watching Live Free or Die Hard (Or Die Hard 4.0 in the UK) straight after watching the first three is like being given a Diet Pepsi when you want a full fat Coke. I mean, it's fine, but it's just not the same. Give me a fucking full on sugary Coke. 

The fourth entry in the Die Hard series and the first in 12 years when it was released just feels like someone who had their balls cut off. The character of John McClane is still there and he has his moments where the character of the original trilogy comes out, but for the most part he feels like a completely different person. 

One of the main problems is due to the cut PG-13 rating, which somehow managed to translate into one of the tamest 15 rated (In the UK) films I've ever seen. McClane doesn't smoke or swear, he's fairly cleaned up and boring. When he does swear it's pretty lame and don't get my started on the "Yippe Kai Yay, motherfucker" being censored with a gunshot. 

What is great about the McClane character is that he's a reluctant hero. An every man who is constantly put into these extraordinary situations. In Live Free or Die Hard, he's merely just a cop doing his job. It's just not very interesting. I like the idea of John McClane, who is an old school guy who doesn't understand technology having to deal with a terrorist threat involving cyber terrorism, but they don't really do a lot with it.

It's mostly just a really annoying Justin Long spouting out stuff McClane or the audience doesn't understand, then McClane responding "In English" or something. This happens a lot through the film. It really doesn't help that Justin Long is such an irritating dick. He's so awkward and annoying, which is a shame, because I actually like Justin Long when he's in something good. Here, he's just wasted.

There is at least some really interesting and fun action scenes. There is some real creativity on display. Sure, the finale with the jet is absurd, but everything before that is pretty awesome. I loved the fire extinguisher kill and the killing the helicopter with a car was inspired. Len Wiseman does a pretty good job creating a visually fine film. The colours are all dull and washed out, but there is a lot of competent film-making on display, which is more than I can say for the abortion that is A Good Day to Die Hard....

Die Hard is well known for its villains. We've had Hans Gruber, Colonel Stuart and Simon Gruber, but now we have Peter Gabriel... who is boring and miscast. Timothy Olyphont is a wonderful actor, his work in Justified is amazing, it's one of the most underrated shows of all-time. I know that was post-Die Hard 4, but he was still known for cowboy like roles thanks to Deadwood, but he's reduced to a computer hacker role and it just feels wrong. I could not think of a better Die Hard film than John McClane going up against a gun-slinging Timothy Olyphant, it would have beautiful.


So that's Live Free or Die Hard, a diluted, bland experience that ruins the character of John McClane, but it at least has some genuinely spectacular set-pieces and action. It's just a shame that the film had its balls snipped off. There is at least an uncut version out there, but it's been 9 years now and there's no sign of a Blu-ray release in the UK. Disgusting.

5/10 Dans

Live Free or Die Hard is out now on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
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Glass (2019) - Cinema Review

Review:

*Originally written January 22nd, 2019*

After nearly a decade of complete trash, then making a huge comeback with both The Visit and Split, M. Night Shyamalan seemed to have finally got his groove back as a director. Sadly, this belated follow-up to Split and Unbreakable is nothing but a soaring disappointed of mishandled ideas, outrageous plot-twists and inane use of established characters.

Following on from the events of Split, Glass finds David Dunn (Bruce Willis) on the trail of Kevin Crumb "The Horde" (James McAvoy) as he's back on the path of kidnapping and eating college girls. The two quickly find themselves locked up in a psychiatric hospital that also contains Elijah Price (Samuel L Jackson) as they're all treated by Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who specialises in cases of grand delusion involving people who believe themselves to be superheroes.

There is so little of this that works that it blows my mind this managed to get made. Shyamalan completely shits the bed with these characters we've seen grow since the series inception with 2000's Unbreakable. Everything feels like something out of a rough first draft, the dialogue is clunky and the execution of the twists are barbarically stupid and nonsensical.

The most intriguing aspect of this follow up is how things have changed for both David Dunn and Elijah Price since the events of Unbreakable, and it turns out its not much. Dunn is still donning his rain poncho and has become a local legend in the form of a vigilante in Philadelphia with the help of his son as he fights crime by night and runs a security store by day. While Price spends the first half of the film sedated and not saying a word.

A big question mark around this was Bruce Willis. This is a man who has not put effort into a role since Looper all the way back 2012, his career has pretty much involved him sleepwalking through straight-to-DVD action films since, with the exception of a Death Wish remake that somehow got a theatrical release last year. Annoyingly, Willis still seems to be in sleepwalking mode here, just spouting out his lines like he really doesn't want to be here. He just looks tired and fed up of life, but it's just such a shame he couldn't put effort into finishing off the story of one of his most acclaimed cult roles. 

Then there's Samuel L Jackson, who does finally spring to life in the latter half of the film, essentially playing a campy comic-book villain who has lost all the nuance and weight of the Price we knew from Unbreakable. This is mostly due to the annoying script that constantly has Price mostly just talking about being in a comic-book and how what's happening in the story relates to where we would be in a comic-book. The whole things gets played out very fast and just keeps going until the film ends.

What's most frustrating about this whole experience is the flashes of potential brilliance that Shyamalan teases us with that ultimately goes nowhere. There's a smart, interesting dissection of the superhero genre buried in here somewhere, it's just a revised script and some better editing away. His visual style is all over the place too, some of the shots and colour design look fantastic, but when it comes to action, Shyamalan creates some deeply uninvolving action that lacks any sort of impact.

There is at least some bright spots involving James McAvoy, who is clearly having far more fun with his role than anyone else here. He effortlessly channels an insane amount of characters with his gonzo physical performance that is just pure joy to watch, despite the context being utter nonsense. While he is billed as one of the three main characters, he certainly takes up most of the screen time as Jackson doesn't even make an appearance until about 40 minutes in and Willis pretty much disappears for the entire middle of the film.

Anya Taylor-Joy's Casey is also a welcome addition, returning to her role from Split after being the only survivor from her encounter with The Horde. Then they just go and derail the whole thing by making her the only person who seems to calm Crumb down, and making her feel sympathy and a connection with Crumb, despite nearly being murdered by him and suffering days of abuse and psychological torture. It's just such a bizarre and misguided direction to take the character and it doesn't work in the slightest.

In the more shallow end of criticisms, it starts off entertaining enough, but grinds to a halt as we spend so much time in the asylum with these characters as they're treated for their delusions in increasingly frustrating and pointless scenes as we all know where it's all going and we know for a fact these characters are what they say they are, so spending so much time having a character try and convince them they're just normal people with mental health issues is just a chore.

Then it all comes crashing down such an anticlimactic showdown that brings all the characters to such shockingly unsatisfying conclusions that pretty much undo all the good work the previous two films have down and makes you wonder what the hell was the point of all this. Maybe expectations were too high, but also it was just Shyamalan becoming a borderline parody of himself as he delivers such hilarious awful plot-twist one after the other in the last 20 minutes or so. 

I won't spoil anything, but one of the twists is something that many people had pointed out just after Split had been release and something I thought had already been confirmed, so seeing it played out as a huge twist just felt weird to me, especially as it was something I thought was pretty well known for nearly 2 years now. Then the last 3 main twists are so stupidly left-field and derailed a film I was already very on the fence about to begin with.


2019 has got its first huge disappointment and it's only January. This is not boding well. Glass is a huge mess on all fronts, barely saved by James McAvoy's scene stealing performance, but derailed by pretty much every other aspect of the film. Such a shame to see this series come to a bitterly insulting conclusion. Wack. 

4/10 Dans

Glass is out now in cinemas in the UK
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Unbreakable (2000) - Blu-ray Review

Review:

*Originally written January 18th, 2019*

With Glass releasing this week it seemed like a safe bet to revisit M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable, his subdued superhero drama that is unlike any superhero film we get today. There's no lame humour aimed at 8 year olds, it's not bright and colourful and it doesn't wrap itself up with a boring CGI battle where a city is destroyed.

It's just a refreshing change of pace after becoming frequently disillusioned and bored by most comic-book films these days. In the past year we've had at least 5, with mixed results and I am dangerously bored by them. It might just be my increasing frustration of seeing every single new big release that I mostly have little interest in, but will give a chance anyway. I'd be fine with this is my local cinema actually showed the smaller films I do want to see, but it's a rarity, and it's frustrating.

Anyway, like I said, Unbreakable is just a breath of fresh air in 2019 and it really gets better with every watch, a character piece with vague brushes of comic-book vibes. I've always been one of those people who found The Sixth Sense a tad overrated and was always more impressed by Unbreakable, a film I found pretty boring as a kid, but being in my 20s, it's far more interesting than I'd remembered.

2000's Bruce Willis who actually tries to act is pretty excellent as David Dunn, a security guard who survives a train-crash that leaves every other passenger dead, while catching the attention of Samuel L Jackson's Elijah Price, a comic-book obsessed art gallery owner who spends his life in a wheelchair due to his rare disease that leaves his bones brittle.

As much as I love Unbreakable and I've seen it a few times now, I tend to always forget a lot of what happens. I obviously remember the big reveal at the end that leads to a barbarically abrupt close where I feel an epilogue or another 10 minutes were planned, but maybe they run out of budget? 

But the mystery at the core of Unbreakable is still fascinating. Seeing Dunn slowly release he's not normal as he does more and more actions that normal human could not do, and I just love how restrained this all is. It's about the characters journey, not some boring end of the world plot. The closest we get to superhero action is a short scene towards the end where Dunn attempts to stop a home invasion which itself is cold, and surprisingly brutal scene. This feels much more like superheroes in the real world, something that has been done many times before, but never this effective. 

I do love Samuel L Jackson's Elijah Price too, a tragic figure who is the polar opposite of Dunn, a man so obsessed with comic books, that he'll do anything in the vein hope that a character like the ones he reads about could be real. It's also just nice to see Jackson in a film where he doesn't get to drop the F bomb and a treat to prove he can give a good performance that actually has gravitas and isn't just fun because "It's Samuel L Jackson"

This was always planned as a trilogy in Shyamalan's head, which we know wouldn't end up happening till 2019 after the clunky reveal that Split was a secret sequel to Unbreakable. As much as the reviews are mixed for Glass, I really am looking forward to it, much more than any of the other Marvel or DC films coming out this year. It might be a mess and not as entertaining as those films, but god, I'm sure it'll at least be more interesting and different.


Unbreakable is a perfect refresher that superhero films can be truly great pieces of art in themselves. They don't need loud, obnoxious set-pieces or cringey jokes, just a grounded story that actually explores its characters rather than having to blow up some giant beam that shoots into the sky. 

9/10 Dans

Unbreakable is out now on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
Watch the trailer below:

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