It Died Hard

Any fear I had about the resurrection of the "Die Hard" franchise quickly faded last night as I watched "Live Free or Die Hard." I can't decide what the defining moment was, but perhaps it was when John McClane made a guy explode through a window after shooting a fire extinguisher. That was probably it... or maybe it was when he took down a helicopter with a car. Either way, by the 30 minute mark, every fear I had vanished and I found myself giggling with delight at how badass this movie was.

Little did I know, I judged Die Hard 4 too soon. It was so B.A. that the projector in the theater couldn't handle the pressure. With fifteen minutes left in the movie, right about the time Bruce Willis finishes tearing up Baltimore in a big rig, the film melted! A dull roar ripped through the theater as the image on the screen deteriorated like that scene in "Fight Club." Back in the projector room, five hairy men wearing nothing but overalls, hardhats, and grime were toiling away, trying to get things under control. "It's too powerful! It can't take no more!" they yell as they hopefully pull levers and turn valves. "The movie is living up to the franchise! We're going down!"

Meanwhile, in the audience, we all gasped at the disturbing site of celluloid going to pot. But, once the shock wore off, everyone began clapping and cheering. There were no qualms about what we had just witnessed: this film, in all it's sheer awesomeness, destroyed itself. It was heroicly tragic. After the cheering stopped, we all realized that our movie was broken. Not cool.

The manager came in to calm everyone down. She said that there was another showing down the hall that was 30 minutes behind ours. The forty-plus people in the theater got up and made the jog down the hall, busting into the theater like a S.W.A.T. team. Who cares about the folks that were in the theater first, they didn't know the horror that we had witnessed... and if anyone complained, I was more than happy to tell them about the events that occur in the next twenty minutes of the movie.

We were able to see the movie the rest of the way through. They kept us all waiting with baited breath for what has been called "The greatest one-liner in movie history." It ended, we survived, and I lived (free) to tell about it. The movie passed the B.A. Test right away, and only assured me of that fact by going down in a blaze of glory. It died hard.