I may as well admit right off the bat that I went into Cop Out totally unaware that it’s a Kevin Smith film, and didn’t realize it all through the movie until the closing credits because the only thing it has in common with any other Kevin Smith films is Jason Lee. This might be because Smith didn’t write the script, but check this out – when Zack and Miri Make A Porno was released, Roger Ebert recalled a conversation with Kevin Smith where he made the following important statement, “I don’t know sh** about directing, but I’m a f***ing good writer.”

Should we be worried then, that he still signed on to direct a movie that he didn’t write?

Whatever the case, Cop Out is meant to be something of a spoof and something of an homage of buddy cop action movies in general, everything from Lethal Weapon to Blue Streak. I’ll admit that I have an almost inexhaustible love of these movies, and hardly ever find them repetitive, derivative or…ah…intrusive, but there is a way to make them (or any comedy) bad, and that’s to just not be funny. I know, that’s a little obvious, but the biggest crime for an unfunny comedy to commit is to have too many unfunny jokes that just go on for far too long, and Cop Out is full of them.

The plot is simple enough. Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis are New York cops with a relationship the just begs to be made into a ho-hum buddy cop movie.  Jimmy (Willis) is an experienced cop struggling with his low salary while his daughter is getting married and his ex-wife’s new husband loves to taunt him for not being able to afford to pay for it. And Paul (Morgan) is Jimmy’s mouthy partner struggling with desperate suspicions that his wife is cheating on him. It won’t be any surprise when a sting operation goes wrong, a storefront gets all shot to hell and Jimmy and Paul end up getting chewed out by the police chief, who’s just about had enough of them. Personally I prefer the completely unintelligible chief in Last Action Hero. That guy was hilarious.

Needless to say, they get suspended for 30 days without pay, and just as I’m again wishing that I had a job where my boss would force me to take a month off, the movie has officially transformed into a giant cliché and it’s safe to look for your entertainment elsewhere. But just when Seann William Scott enters and you think you might have something to laugh at, he ends up being responsible for the majority of the movie’s lengthy, unfunny jokes. Scott plays Dave. Jimmy had a classic baseball card that he was going to sell so he could pay for his daughter’s wedding, but Dave stole it and sold it for drugs. Jimmy makes Dave lead him to the Hispanic gangsters that he sold the card to, and they tell Jimmy that he can have the card back if Jimmy can just get back a beloved, stolen Mercedes.

Oooohhh! Tough guy!

Anyway, you see where this is going. Jimmy needs to get that card back and pay for a wedding, Paul needs to find out if his wife is cheating on him, the gangster needs his car, and Dave needs to crack a lot of bad jokes at the expense of Paul’s vanity. Everyone puts in a sufficient performance, but there’s something missing that would have made the movie really memorable. It’s not a bad movie, just a run of the mill cop comedy that no one will argue is the best work from anyone involved. And it doesn’t help that the whole criminal element, the Mexican gangsters caricatures, involves a level of visceral violence that’s totally at odds with the comedy that the rest of the movie tries to convey. Seems that these two elements may have done better in separate movies. Fans of the leads will have a good time, but I recommend waiting for the DVD.

The Bean Meter

Seann William Scott telling a joke, Bruce Willis not getting it, Tracy Morgan not caring.

Photo:INFDaily.com

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is done with the whole political scene and announced he will not continue his political career once his final term as Governor of California ends.

Arnold stated,

I have never labeled myself as a politician, so I am not going to run for anything else.

As for his acting career, Arnold is set to star in Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables along side Bruce Willis and Terry Crews.

What job do you think Arnold is best suited for?  Acting or Politics?

Mankind’s current tendency to go tearing through our natural resources at breakneck speed has for decades inspired countless science fiction films about our searching in outer space for usable resources or other inhabitable planets. It’s interesting that Surrogates is sharing cineplexes with Pandorum, another futuristic sci-fi film about mankind attempting to send an embryonic population of 16,000 people to a distant, earth-like planet (having completely used up Earth’s sustainable resources). But for all the similarities between the two movies, they could hardly be more different.

Pandorum is about a time when the human population has reached almost 25 billion and has completely used up the planet (the year 2174, I believe), resulting in the need to find another planet to live on. Surrogates, on the other hand, takes place in a future not so far off, in which a massive corporation called VSI has created human-like robots called surrogates that people can control from their homes. So you can go out and live your daily life through your surrogate without ever having to leave the safety of your home, and if I remember correctly, a staggering 98% of the world’s population is using surrogates. So one film is about catastrophic over-population, and the other is about a corporation that has become unimaginably successful by effectively doubling the population..

So here’s the story – Surrogate technology is not new, but has now become available to the general public, resulting in a society populated almost entirely with robots, while the real humans generally don’t leave their homes for years at a time. You can choose everything about your surrogate from gender and race to hair color and height, so everyone you meet on the street is a picture of physical perfection, but you have no idea who you’re really talking to when you meet one.  Nevertheless, society has turned into a happily bleached, plasticky utopia  until two surrogates are found dead in an alley. Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) is assigned to the case, and his surrogate’s investigations reveal that not only are the robots’ eyes fried in their sockets, but the human operators at home were also killed by the attacks on their unlucky avatars. And in a society like this, the existence of a weapon loose in society that can kill real people through attacks on avatars is a major problem. It would be like a computer virus that fries your hard drive and then kills you.

Of course, there are also groups of humans who reject surrogacy as an abomination live in filthy, dilapidated refugee camps throughout the country and are united by their leader, the Prophet (Ving Rhames), who preaches to them about the inevitable destruction of surrogate society through a glorious Civil War, and the subsequent return of real humans to the outside world. It would seem that the hundreds of millions of Terminator-like surrogates would make short work of a few thousand dirty and untrained revolutionaries, but the appearance of this mystery weapon changes everything. Also complicating matters are the mysterious death of the son of the creator of surrogate technology and a suspicious character named Miles Strickland, who’s criminal activities are being covered up but by who and why we don’t know.

Surrogates are not only popular personal appliances, they also make great golf cart pilots for the Department of Defense!

My only real problem with the movie is that is has one of those storylines that raises more questions than it answers. It’s a little on the slow side in the set-up but soon turns into a balls-out action movie that looks a little too much like a Die Hard film. Not that that’s a bad thing, I happen to think that the Die Hard movies are all pretty good (except part 2), but I spent a little too much time daydreaming during high-octane action sequences about things that the movie doesn’t attempt to even briefly consider.

For example, it’s reported that racism and crime are down to basically zero as a result of surrogacy. Race, I can understand. You can choose your own race, so no one really knows what race anyone else is anyway. But by midway through the film it becomes clear that surrogates are capable of superhuman feats, like leaping effortlessly from car to car in fast-moving traffic, and if everyone is at home living vicariously through such things, doesn’t it seem like more people would have the nerve to commit crimes?

Prophet, the "Human Coalition Leader."

There’s a weak effort to explain this, as we learn that there is an overweight computer wiz up in some office surrounded by computers who can patch into and freeze anyone’s connection with their surrogate should a crime be noted in progress. But are we to believe that they have one guy who can stop all the crimes among hundreds of millions of people?

More importantly, let’s get right to the point that you know you’ve all been thinking about from the very beginning – Are surrogates anatomically correct? The premise of this movie has some fascinating prospects for the porn industry, but what really happens when two surrogates meet and are interested in each other? The whole point of surrogacy, after all, is to be able to live your everyday life as someone younger and better looking than yourself, so how do these interactions happen? One takes place early in the movie, a good-looking guy meets a hot blonde at a club and they burst out into an alleyway making out in a fit of passion. What would come next? Would the surrogates have sex with each other? Do their operators – both male, in this case – just masturbate at home while their respective avatars are grab-assing in the alleyway?

I understand that not only do these freaky set-ups control your surrogates, but they can also be connected to your computer, in case you want to browse the internet or maybe pop in an old DVD copy of The 6th Day.

Unfortunately, both surrogates and both operators are killed before we can find out, leaving a pestering question that never gets answered.

Granted, when we catch glimpses of the people operating the surrogates, the last thing you want to know about them is how they go about getting their creepy jollies, so the movie focuses on more important things like the origins of the mysterious weapon and the extent of its destructive capabilities. As it turns out, with the right access it could destroy every surrogate in the world and simultaneously kill every person operating one. You can see why it becomes a primary concern.

Director Jonathan Mostow didn’t exactly blow my hair back with Terminator 3, but he shows in Surrogates that he definitely has some action directing chops. Surrogates isn’t the best action movie of the year, and it’s even not quite as good as the trailer makes it look, but it has a great premise based on the graphic novel by Robert Venditti and and Brett Weldele and has excellent performances throughout. There are also some pretty powerful images in the last ten minutes or so that might be the best thing about the whole movie. If by the end you hadn’t been left with any lasting images, you’ll definitely find them there.

The Bean Meter

4 Beans out of 5.

I preparation for the glorious experience of Quentin Tarantino’s latest epic, Inglourious Basterds, I have compiled the following list of the best of Tarantino’s best, so let’s all revel in the glory of violence past in sweet anticipation of the inglorious violence to come this weekend!

Here are my picks in no particular order (except numerical):

10. Grindhouse: Death Proof (2007)

I think one of the things that makes Tarantino unique is that he takes two of the most common elements in filmmaking, humor and violence, and combines them together in such a way that it leaves an impression on us strong enough for it to materialize into what we have come to call his style. Consider, for example, his toothless friend getting shot in the face in Desperado, Tim Roth cutting off his friend’s little finger in Four Rooms, his bathrobed belly-aching when Jules and Vincent show up to his house with a bloodied car in Pulp Fiction. The violence is graphic and intense, so why is it always so damned funny?

Whatever the reason, in 2007 all the stops were pulled out for the Grindhouse double-feature, which displayed such extreme ultra-violence that you almost don’t know whether to cringe or laugh. Quentin didn’t direct the entire 3+ hours of the double feature (he shared directing responsibilities with the likes of  Rob Zombie, Robert Rodriguez, and Eli Roth), but the sheer spectacle of the thing earns it a spot among Tarantino’s best.

Grindhouse trivia – some years ago Tarantino was talking to a friend about buying a car. He wanted to get a Volvo because he “didn’t want to die in some auto accident like the one in Pulp Fiction.” His friend replied that he could get any car he wanted and give it to a stunt team, and for $10,000 or $15,000 they would “death-proof it” for him, and into Tarantino’s head popped the idea for this movie.

9. Sin City (2005)

Two years before Grindhouse, Tarantino had teamed up again with Robert Rodriguez and graphic novelist Frank Miller to come out with the highly stylized Sin City. Tarantino and Rodriguez combine the dark, wet streets of a comic book metropolis with a stylish sense of violence and visionary photography in a story about the widespread decline of morality in a gritty metropolis. The film was directed by Rodriguez but it is such a visionary accomplishment that, even though Tarantino took only special guest directing credit, it still earns a spot among his best work.

Sin City trivia – Robert Rodriguez did the score for Kill Bill Vol. I (2003) for a whopping salary of $1. To pay him back, Tarantino agreed to direct his segment of Rodriguez’s film for $1. When asked about his experience in directing in HD (Tarantino staunchly supports film over digital), Tarantino simply replied, “Mission accomplished.”

Favorite line – Marv: “I love hitmen. No matter what you do to them, you don’t feel bad.”

8. From Dusk ‘til Dawn (1996)

This will probably be the most unpopular movie on my list of Tarantino’s best, but even though it was not as well-received as most of his other work, I still maintain that the first half of this movie is so entertaining and so well written and acted that it outweighs the weaknesses of the second half. Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney made an outstanding team as a couple of marauding criminals escaping to Mexico and leaving a trail of bloody aftermath in their wake, and Juliette Lewis is an added bonus in a role that she seems born to play.

The movie starts out as a charismatic crime tale and descends into a vampire slaughterfest that’s imaginative buta definite step down from the first half of the movie, but this ranks with Desperado and Pulp Fiction as one of my favorite of Tarantino’s actual performances in a movie. He takes a writing credit while once again under Robert Rodriguez’s direction, but it’s his performance, as well as Clooney’s, Lewis’s, and Harvey Keitel’s, that really make it memorable.

From Dusk ‘til Dawn trivia – Salma Hayek, who appears as an exotic dancer at the Titty Twister, did not work with a choreographer. Rodriguez just told her to feel the music and dance to it, and the result was so freaking crazy hot that he did the same thing with Jessica Alba in Sin City.

Favorite line – Seth (Clooney) – “I may be a bastard but I’m not a f**king bastard.”

7. Desperado (1995)

Another of Tarantino’s misunderstood classics, Desperado throws all caution to the wind in the swashbuckling Mexican western the same way From Dusk ‘til Dawn did with vampires. Antonio Banderas takes over the title role of El Mariachi, played by Carlos Gallardo in Robert Rodriguez’s original 1992 film. This sequel to El Mariachi finds a wandering musician looking for work but finding only heaps of trouble, helped along by his conspicuous possession of a guitar-case full of guns, one of which you may remember seeing worn in the nether regions of the character Sex Machine in From Dusk ‘til Dawn.

Banderas’ performance is definitely the highlight of the movie, although I will argue that this is Tarantino at his funniest, as he chokes down a mouthful of beer that reminds him of a joke, the telling of which has to be one of the best told jokes I’ve ever seen in a movie. Everything is over the top in true Rodriguez/Tarantino form, but the entertainment level is through the roof as always and the gunfights are freaking awesome I don’t care what anybody says.

Trivia – When they shot the love scene between Banderas and Salma Hayek, the entire film crew showed up to watch it. And for good reason.

6. True Romance (1993)

Tarantino takes a writing credit for True Romance, which really should be placed higher on this list, since it also features one of Inglorious Basterds star Brad Pitt’s early film roles. True Romance is definitely an under-appreciated gem and I highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it already. The best description I’ve heard of the move is that it’s sort of like a boy meets girl kind of thing, except more like boy meets girl, boy kills girl’s pimp, new couple takes pimp’s coke, bad guys chase couple. Oh and Elvis is thrown in there somewhere. There’s nothing like a newly married couple on the run from bloodthirsty gangsters to bring you the height of true Tarantino-style romance.

Oh, and Brad Pitt plays a guy named Floyd. This is not to be missed!
.
5. Jackie Brown (1997)

Weighed down by the pressure of living up to Pulp Fiction, Tarantino’s previous feature film, I don’t think Jackie Brown initially got the recognition that it deserves, but it is the best reflection of Tarantino’s life-long love of 70’s blaxploitation films, one of the biggest stars of which takes the starring role in the film.

Pam Grier is Jackie Brown, an unassuming flight attendant caught in the middle of a gun smuggling operation run by the owner of the airline that she works for. Stuck between the gun runners and the ATF, Jackie gets involved in a thick plot to set them all against each other and try to make off with half a million dollars herself. It’s a great crime story set at a crackling pace and with a massive cast, including Samuel L. Jackson, Robert DeNiro, Bridget Fonda, Chris Tucker, and Michael Keaton.

Best line – Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) – “AK-47! The very best there is. When you absolutely positively got to kill every motherf**ker in the room, accept no substitutes!”

4. Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004)

Turning his back on vampires and gunslingers, Tarantino takes on writing and directing responsibilities in bringing his auteur style to his tale of ultimate betrayal and revenge. The first film in Tarantino’s two-part saga, if I remember correctly, ended so abruptly that a lot of people were a little angry at having to wait another year to find out the rest of the story. It was a bold move for them to finally introduce us to the hated Bill in the form of the late David Carradine in a lengthy, talky scene where he lovingly makes bologna sandwiches for his and Elle’s daughter, but don’t worry, the movie has plenty of the ultra-violence that Tarantino is best at.

Kill Bill trivia – Kill Bill Vol. 2 is unofficially Quentin Tarantino’s first sequel, and he badly violates the higher-body-count rule of sequels. In the original film, 41 people are killed. In the sequel, 3!

3. Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)

Ah, the one that started it all. Or the one that started them both, anyway. In one of the most stunning sequences to come along in years, Uma Thurman’s character, here known only as The Bride, wakes up from a coma to discover that the baby with which she was pregnant has been stolen, she’s beaten and bruised and bleeding and buried alive by the assassination team that she was once a part of. As the title song explains, her baby shot her down and she soon embarks on a mission to get revenge on the other four members of the brilliantly titled Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. Revenge is a dish best served cold and The Bride gets plenty close to death to soak lots of coldness into her bones, and it comes out in the stunning fight sequences that are to follow. This is not only one of Tarantino’s best films, it is a gory martial arts classic.

2. Reservoir Dogs (1992)

One of Tarantino’s technically simplest films ever, Reservoir Dogs definitely deserves the crown for violence. The Kill Bills had geysers of blood and eyeballs ripped out and such, but the scene in Reservoir Dogs with the cop’s ear is one of the most horrible scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie, and believe me, I’ve seen a lot of movies. The violence is much more gritty and visceral here than in most of Tarantino’s other films, which is why it’s so much more difficult to watch. An ensemble cast all deliver stunning, spot-on performances in a simply told but highly effective crime thriller.

Known only by their colorful names, seven total strangers come together to pull off the perfect diamond heist, only to learn how little they can trust each other when things immediately go horribly wrong. Tons of blood and gore and brilliant dialogue, it may be difficult to watch but it is definitely one of Tarantino’s most effective films ever.

1. Pulp Fiction (1994)

Whenever I write a list like this, I always hate to jump on the bandwagon and go along with the crowd with what the number one movie should be, but I watched Pulp Fiction again not too long ago and there is just no way to argue that it is not Tarantino’s best film. In one of my favorite film structures, Pulp Fiction is about a lot of totally different people who’s lives come to be intertwined with each other in the most unexpected ways. The title refers to a style of sensationalized writing that is “generally regarded as being of poor quality,” which is more than I can say for the writing of Pulp Fiction, which is about as good as we can ask for in a movie. When you can keep an audience enraptured by a couple of guys in a cafe talking about nothing more interesting than burgers and wandering, you know you’re doing something right in the screenwriting department.

But it is the performances that really bring out the subject matter and make it resonate within us. John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson are both in peak form as two of the main characters, Vincent and Jules, as are Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, Ving Rhames, the list goes on.

But you’ve all seen the movie, you know all this stuff. Rather than go on and sing obvious praises, I’ll just let Jules explain it as only he (and the Bible) can -

“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and a finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

-Ezekiel 25:17

Bruce Willis and his new wife, model Emma Heming, recently posed for W Magazine in a few scandalous pictures.

Check out the rest below in the gallery:

As you, gentle readers, no doubt know, Hollywood and comic books have long had an alliance of sorts, what with the many comic-book movies that have come out recently, such as the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, the recent Watchmen film, and the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie, which was basically a vehicle for Hugh Jackman to be awesome for about two hours.  The upcoming film, Surrogates, which will star venerated action-movie icon Bruce Willis as both an android and a detective desperate to stop a cyber-terrorist, is set to be released this September, and as much as I am excited for this film, which is based on an excellent sci-fi comic-book series, there is one problem I have: Bruce Willis’ awful, atrocious, abominable, “dutch-boy” wig.

"Why, yes, I do look like an enormous weenie with this haircut!"

This haircut is used for Bruce Willis’ android/replicant/surrogate self as he attempts to bring down the cyber-terrorist who is out to destroy the virtual world of the movie (because sci-fi writers everywhere agree, a future with both the internet, Bruce Willis, AND robots would be totally sweet).  But, the Bruce Willis of the film’s second half, in which he is NOT controlling a surrogate body has his trademark, “Bald and Bad-ass” look, complete with an awesome leather jacket that probably has a few bullet holes.

Checking his futuristic E-mail, and he's STILL cooler than you, lowly mortal.

I, who grew up with an image of Bruce Willis as a bad-guy-punching, hot-lady-getting ass-kicker, cannot deal with this slight against an action-movie veteran.  Come on, we’re talking about John McClane, here!  The guy’s first words were probably “Yippie-Kay-Yay, motherfucker!”  How can the producers allow that horrible wig to exist?

John McClane was probably born with that gun in his hand.

However, Surrogates is pretty much already set to be released (at this point, they’re just finishing up editing, making awesome trailers that show Bruce Willis running after evil-doers, punching stuff, and generally being the epitome of cool), so at this point, there is nothing I can really do other than complain.  Complain, and look back on his other action films, outside of the Die Hard series, in which he has the manliest of haircuts, rather than that stupid wig.  Take, for example, his portrayal of Detective Hartigan in the film adaptation of Frank Miller’s Sin City comic books.

Pictured: Awesomeness. Not pictured: Stupid wigs.

Surrogates itself, though, promises to be an excellent example of science-fiction film, and really, I’m just nit-picking.  Although Bruce Willis is going to have a stupid haircut for a fair bit of the movie, the film itself, if it does not depart too much from comic book on which it is based, will not disappoint in any other respects, mainly because Bruce Willis is going to be punching robots for two hours, which geeks everywhere will agree, is totally rad.

You can watch the trailer here.

Bruce Willis and his model/actress girlfriend, Emma Heming, got married on Saturday, March 21st.  The small private ceremony was held at Willis’ Caribbean home on Parrot Cay, on the Turks and Caicos island.  The guest list included ex-wife Demi Moore and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, Madonna, and Willis three children, Rumor, Scout, and Tallulah Belle.  For more details on the wedding check out whyfame.com.

Apparently Bruce Willis is getting re-married this weekend to his girlfriend of over 8 months, model Emma Heming.

We’ll see about that. I wonder if Rumer will be at the wedding sporting her new tatty?

Demi Moore will be gracing the cover of V magazine this spring.  Check out her smoke’n hot photos below–totally photoshopped of course, but hey, not bad for a 45 year old!

In the interview for V magazine, she talks about her move back to Los Angeles, how the paparazzi have affected her, and how Britney has had worse than anyone.  She is quoted in USA Today as saying,

“When I first moved back to L.A., I had a very difficult time and found that I didn’t want to leave the house so much,” Moore says. “And then I started to feel, well, I don’t want to be isolated and worried that if they’re getting a photograph then I’m not going to go and do something. It’s difficult when they hang out at the bottom of your street waiting for you to drive by.”

“No one has seen it worse than Britney Spears,” she says. “How can anyone see that and think that’s an OK way to expect anybody to live, no matter where they’re at in their life?”

Demi’s latest movie, Flawless, is expected to release this spring.

Before I say anything about Die Hard 4, I just want to remind everyone that anything that has anything to do with computers in the movie serves no purpose other than to drive the plot and to provide for some surprisingly effective comic relief. There is tons and tons of nonsense about hacking into this and hacking into that and how only 9 guys in the world could do such and such with a laptop and blah blah blah blah. Don’t take the time to try to figure out exactly what they’re talking about, even if you’re a computer expert (especially if you’re a computer expert), because it’s just going to distract you from the rest of the movie, which is a pretty powerful argument that there is still a place for an old-school NYPD officer in the 21st century.

Let’s review, shall we? Die Hard is still among the dwindling list of movie franchises where the original movie is still the best one. Die Hard 2 was a cartoonish mess, and part 3, despite essentially plagiarizing the first Dirty Harry movie, was not the same thriller as the original but was still a great action movie. There have been many complains about casting Justin Long alongside Bruce Willis as his sidekick in this movie, because he’s so well-known as the guy from the Apple Computer commercials. Maybe I watch too many movies and not enough TV, but to me he will always be known as the phenomenally idiotic Darry Jenner from Jeepers Creepers. Good God those movies were awful…

So this time around, McClane has moved up in the world from reckless, irresponsible New York Cop to reckless, irresponsible absentee father who has little to do with his teenage daughter’s life until some jerk drives her home and gets a little too pushy with her. John saves her from getting groped by some meathead, but she’s still pretty unappreciative. Their relationship hasn’t been so great over the years. Soon John is called to duty to pick up some kid named Matt Ferrell, who is on a short list of computer super-nerds wanted by the U.S. government due to a recent glitch in the national security computer systems.

John thinks little of the assignment until a high-tech assassination attempt is made on the kid, and he discovers that he’s not the only person trying to track him down. It seems that everyone else on that short list has been executed by some shady organization, and John has to keep his cool trying to figure out who and why while they’re trying to kill him and while, in the meantime, they manage to kidnap his daughter.

There is tons of great action in the movie, although detractors can easily call attention to the fact that the plot-line is clearly designed to set the stage for the next action pieces. Personally, I thought the action pieces were awesome, so I could really care less if there isn’t exactly an Oscar-worthy script underneath it all. There is also the issue of the epic over-the-topness of some of the action pieces, such as the pilot of the fighter jet who can’t seem to hit a lumbering semi-truck, but can pilot his machine around under freeway overpasses, dodging bridges and whatnot.

John McClane and a walkie-talkie - one of the best action movie duos ever.

But again, I feel like the over-the-topness, while not a huge part of the original movie, was introduced in part 2, explored a bit in part 3, and now has developed to a point where it is one of the most appealing parts of the movie. Put it this way – there is a scene in the movie where McClane takes down a helicopter, and if you are unimpressed with how he does it (and his reaction, which I would argue is one of the funniest parts of the whole movie), then you’re either in the wrong frame of mind or this is just not your kind of movie.

Justin Long didn’t have much to do in the film except crack jokes and pop out his handy roll-up keyboard and hack into anything that needed hacking within a few seconds, although he didn’t detract from the movie as much as you would expect, given his iconography. Kevin Smith is purely hilarious as Long’s super-geek buddy, and later the two teamed up again with Zack and Miri Make A Porno, in which Long was the star of one of the movie’s funniest scenes. Timothy Olyphant is perfect as the movie’s main villain, Thomas Gabriel. He’s a little too clean-cut and flawlessly dressed and groomed, but he looks like a cross between Christian Slater and a young Jack Nicholson, and that’s not a bad place to be if you’re a Die Hard villain. It’s just too bad that he’s saddled with ancient action clichés like “You have no idea who I am and what I’m capable of…”

Nice try, Maggie. You're nice to look at but your believability factor is through the floor...

But the biggest problem with the casting is Maggie Q as Mai, Gabriel’s crazy hot assistant. She’s not only a super-genius computer hacker who can bring down national communication mainframes with a few strokes of the keyboard, but she’s also a martial arts expert who, if Jason Statham and Jet Li were in this movie alongside Bruce Willis, she could hold them all off for a while, too. Hell, she might even have the pure, unadulterated ass-kicking know-how to make Steven Seagal bleed his own blood. Can you imagine?

Although if I can make one small complaint, the climactic action sequence at the end of the movie was so screwed up I couldn’t believe it. It takes place on freeways and roads and whatnot, and in nearly every shot there were cars parked all over the road, I guess to give the illusion that it was taking place on a regular day of traffic, except that without exception not a single car had a driver or was even moving. Even though I loved the movie, I don’t remember ever seeing a major action sequence in a big-budget movie so badly botched. The villain’s main plot also falls apart pretty thoroughly (his plan to download the country’s financial data from a “backup” location is feared to throw the nation into irreversible chaos – what does “backup” mean again, exactly?), but this is otherwise a nearly perfect summer action blockbuster.

4 Beans out of 5.