Tonight I finally gave in and celebrated the Fourth of July. What better way to get into the spirit then enjoying a quality Bruce Willis action movie. Live Free or Die Hard, the 2007 thriller about an attempt to seize the computer infrastructure of the ....US.... seemed to be a logical choice. The 3-star rating it received sealed the deal.
I did not ask for much going in. All I needed was a back-story interesting enough to cover for all he wanton violence standard with every Bruce Willis movie. Sure, Willis is getting older, but no movie in this series would be complete without several violent scenes with some bordering on mass murder. All of this, of course, is done in the service of setting up Willis for the final triumph of good over evil.
Even these small expectations were dashed. Willis' character is essentially a violent Luddite barbarian battling against evil 21st century hackers. The movie begins with a tractor-trailer full of hackers doing their evil business - why are they there? Why do they take orders from one person? Well, who cares? They are evil and at war with "our country" (a term used seemingly every five minutes) – the now classic "evil-doers."
Willis manages to push one of the formerly evil hackers in the direction of "our country" by providing a nationalist pep talk in an alleyway while total chaos ensues as a result of a near-total computer driven shut down. The converted hacker then becomes Willis' apprentice in redemptive violence while offering technological assistance and enduring a string of jokes about his generations ("hacker jerk-offs") lack of machismo.
Willis is a violent barbarian but a barbarian carrying all of the moral values in the movie. So, he is sure to call the lead evil female character in the movie a "bitch" and "whore" before casting her down an elevator shaft. Or, he seems confident in leveraging his only daughter as bait to catch the high-tech evildoer. In fact, this brings the two closer together.
Interspersed between all of these complex plot scenes is a never-ending series of gun fights. Problem is the gun battles are run A-Team style - i.e. no matter how many bullets are fired from semi-automatic weapons none of them hits Willis (not matter how hard I wished it might happen). However, when Willis shoots his handgun someone is sure to die.
The bottom line message of the movie is two-fold. First, any action taken by the good-doers - in this case Willis and every military and espionage agency of the ....US.... state - is justified. Not only is it justified, it is necessary, since evil-hackers might just attempt to breed chaos "for the fun of it." Yes, like the terrorists of the real world there is no serious explanation for the actions of the villains in this movie.
Perhaps the greatest message is delivered about two-thirds of the way through the movie when it is revealed that the real objective of the evil-hackers is to erase all data of global financial transactions. The characters, including FBI agents and the converted hacker, shrink in terror and postulate on the terrible consequences of such an evil act. I just sort of wondered whether the delete button would have included my overdue credit cards, or my student loans, or all those stocks I do not own. This movie is supposed to be made for popular appeal but, since only 5% of the country controls 85% of the wealth what's the investment for the rest of us?
So, at least now I can say that I did my patriotic duty. I received a healthy reminder of the positive necessity for the use of maximum violence, how much "we" need "our country" and its security apparatus and how evil most hackers are. Nothing symbolized this cultural lesson more clearly then the closing scene where the once nerdy hacker fires five bullets into the chest of the evil hacker villain. In exchange, he gets a shot of morphine, a bullet in the leg and a chance to score "a chick."
-Written by Billy Wharton (wawharton@yahoo.com)
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