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Trust Weighted
Great
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103Trust Points
Wick's Review
Summary - Very Good 3.5
Finis. Boffo blow out to the Die Hard series. Willis – he of the movie star blockhead and sotto voce movie star voice – has perfected the art of downplaying his lines in contrast to the over-the-top outrageousness of the action going on around him. The result is one fun, fun, fun big screen entertainment.
Acting - Good 3.0
Bruce Willis proved himself more than a little funny when he burst on the scene 20 years ago in Moonlighting. It’s good to see his timing has – if anything – improved with age. The guy is a hoot.
Male Stars - Great 4.0
Tim Olyphant - already one of the great screen sheriffs on Deadwood - proves he can cross the thin blue line to the dark side. His performances are mostly internal anyway, telegraphed via the arch of a finely sculpted facial bone, making him a believable super-evil-genius. Justin Long nails the Nerd King role that he long ago perfected in the Mac ads. He hits the essential note: making pseudo-techno jargon sound plausible, natural even.Female Stars - Good 3.0
The Ice Queen femme fatale was a bit too chilly for me.Female Costars - Barely OK 2.0
Male Costars - Barely OK 2.0
Kevin Smith was a disappointment. You see the guy come on screen and you start to giggle because he's always been funny before. But he's just a cipher of his usual persona here.Film - Very Good 3.5
Basically funny all the way through, especially Willis’ McClain lines. Kudos also to the story, which hit the requisite balance of a post-9/11 world under attack without dipping into anything too serious.
Crazy great stunts: freshly conceived, slickly executed.
Direction - Good 3.0
Dialogue - Great 4.0
Music - Good 3.0
Visuals - Really Great 4.5
Edge - Risqué 2.2
Lots of shooting and blowing up and people theoretically dying, without – you know – much of that awful blood and gore and real death to spoil the buzz.
Sex Innocent 1.5
Violence Brutal 3.1
Rudeness Salty 2.0
Reality - Supernatural 3.4
Die Hard 2: Die Harder galvanized the need to define rFactors, so attenuated was that movie’s bond with reality. It was like the filmmakers said:
What if we just say – to hell with it – let’s have live action characters act like Gumby with guns!