Live Free or Die Hard

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Live Free or Die Hard
Live Free or Die Hard official movie poster
Directed by	Len Wiseman
Produced by	Michael Fottrell Arnold Rifkin executive William Wisher executive Stephan J Eads
Written by	Characters: Roderick Thorp Story: Mark Bomback David Marconi Screenplay: Mark Bomback
Starring	Bruce Willis Timothy Olyphant Justin Long Mary Elizabeth Winstead Maggie Q
Music by	Marco Beltrami
Editing by	Nicolas De Toth
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	USA June 27, 2007 UK July 4, 2007 AUS August 8, 2007
Running time	129 min.
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	$110 million[1]
Gross revenue	Domestic: $134,529,403 Worldwide: $383,109,500
Preceded by	Die Hard with a Vengeance
Official website
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Live Free or Die Hard (released as Die Hard 4.0 or Die Hard 4 outside North America and also known as Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard) is a 2007 action film, and the fourth installment in the Die Hard series. The film was directed by Len Wiseman and stars Bruce Willis as John McClane, the protagonist of the first three films. Other cast members included Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Maggie Q. The storyline takes place 19 years after the first film, and sees McClane face a gang of cyber terrorists. The film was based on the 1997 article "A Farewell to Arms" written for Wired magazine by John Carlin.^[2] The film's North American release date was June 27, 2007.^[3]

After the project was initially stalled due to the September 11, 2001 attacks, production eventually began, and the film's title was switched several times. A variety of visual effects were used for action sequences, even though Wiseman and Willis stated that they wanted to limit the amount of CGI in the film. In separate incidents during filming, both Willis and his stunt double were injured. Unlike the prior three films in the series, the US rating was PG-13 rather than R.

Live Free or Die Hard received generally positive reviews, earning a 80% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 69/100 from Metacritic and had total international box office gross receipts of $382.1 million. For the DVD release, 20th Century Fox pioneered a new kind of DRM that tries to weaken the incentives for consumers to learn how to rip discs by offering them a downloadable version with studio-imposed restrictions. The score for the film was released on July 2, 2007 and a video game has been proposed for the Xbox 360.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Production 3.1 Script and title 3.2 Visual effects 3.3 Filming and injuries 4 Rating 5 Reception 6 DVD and video game release 7 Soundtrack 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Plot

The film begins with computer hackers transferring sensitive data to an operative of a terrorist group. This leads to a breach of an FBI facility's computer system, as the computer hackers who aided the scheme are assassinated by the terrorist mastermind Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant), instead of being paid for their collaboration. The FBI, unaware of the killings, dispatches NYPD Police Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) to bring in a known hacker, Matthew Farrell (Justin Long), who has also unwittingly assisted Gabriel, as part of their investigation regarding the breach. Gabriel's thugs attempt to assassinate McClane and Farrell, but their targets escape. McClane transports Farrell to the FBI's Washington DC headquarters and its head, Deputy Director Bowman (Cliff Curtis), in the midst of a shutdown of the traffic system in DC. The stock market is manipulated shortly afterward, causing it to crash.

McClane is ordered to take Farrell into protective custody and Gabriel sends more thugs to kill the pair. McClane and Farrell evade their assassins again and in the process knock down a helicopter with an FBI police car, as the country's infrastructure is threatened with a major break down, Farrell tells McClane the terrorists are initiating a "fire sale" attack, and that major utilities would be next. The detective and the hacker travel to a power hub in West Virginia to defend it, finding that the terrorists are already there. McClane battles terrorists while Farrell undoes the damage done to the computer system. They are contacted by Gabriel, who finds out that McClane has killed his lover Mai Linh (Maggie Q) and angrily re-routes gas lines to destroy the hub in a gas explosion. McClane and Farrell escape once more, and on Farrell's advice, the pair visit his hacker friend the Warlock (Kevin Smith) for help. At the Warlock's home, they find out about Gabriel's background and attempt to hack into the terrorist's systems. Gabriel contacts the detective at the Warlock's home via webcam and shows that he has McClane's daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) as a hostage. While McClane distracts Gabriel in conversation, Warlock determines Gabriel's location, at a hijacked Social Security Administration building called Woodlawn (referring to its location in Woodlawn, Maryland).

McClane and Farrell travel to the SSA building. The detective combats the terrorists while Ferrell discovers and tries to undo Gabriel's plan to steal backup financial information from servers in the building. Farrell is able to encrypt all of their downloaded data, rendering their downloaded financial information inaccessible, and then he is taken hostage by the terrorists. With McClane after them, Gabriel and his henchmen flee the building with their hostages. McClane manages to hijack one of the escaping trucks and pursues Gabriel and the hostages. Gabriel renders a hack to deceive the pilot of a F-35 Lightning II/Joint Fighter jet to attack McClane's truck. The jet engages McClane, destroying much of the freeway in the process, but the detective is able to escape. He tracks Gabriel to a warehouse, where the terrorist is forcing Farrell to undo the encryption at gunpoint. McClane and Farrell are able to kill Gabriel and his men before they force Farrell to decrypt the lock, resolving the crisis. The FBI arrives shortly after to tend to the wounds of Farrell and McClane. There is also an intended romance for Farrell and Lucy in the ambulance scene. The final shot is McClane and his daughter leaving in an ambulance.

[edit] Cast

The involvement of McClane's daughter in the film was previously considered for Die Hard with a Vengeance, and was used in the video game Die Hard: Vendetta.^[4] It was speculated that Bruce Willis' real life daughter Rumer, who was born the same year that the original Die Hard was released, was a prime candidate for the part of Lucy McClane.^[5] Jessica Simpson,^[6] Britney Spears,^[7] and Taylor Fry,^[8] who played Lucy in the original Die Hard movie in 1988, had all previously auditioned for the role. The role of Lucy eventually went to Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

Actor	Role
Bruce Willis	John McClane
Mary Elizabeth Winstead	Lucy McClane
Justin Long	Matt Farrell
Timothy Olyphant	Thomas Gabriel
Cliff Curtis	Miguel Bowman
Željko Ivanek	Agent Molina
Maggie Q	Mai Linh
Jonathan Sadowski	Trey
Tim Russ	Agent Summers
Kevin Smith	Warlock / Freddie
Christina Chang	Taylor
Yorgo Constantine	Russo
Andrew Friedman	Casper
Sung Kang	Raj
Matt O'Leary	Clay
Cyril Raffaelli	Rand

[edit] Production

[edit] Script and title

The film's plot is based on an earlier script entitled WW3.com by David Marconi, screenwriter of Enemy of the State.^[9] Using a Wired article entitled "A Farewell to Arms"^[10] by John Carlin, Marconi crafted a screenplay about a cyber-terrorist attack on the U.S.^[11] The attack procedure is known as a "fire sale," depicting a three-stage coordinated attack on a country's transportation, telecommunications, financial, and utilities infrastructure systems. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the project was stalled, only to be resurrected several years later and rewritten into Live Free or Die Hard by Doug Richardson and eventually by Mark Bomback.^[12]

Willis said in 2005 that the film would be called Die Hard 4.0, as it revolves around computers and cyber-terrorism. IGN later reported the film was to be called Die Hard: Reset instead.^[13] 20th Century Fox later announced the title as Live Free or Die Hard and set a release date of June 29, 2007 with filming to begin in September 2006.^[14][15] The title is based on the state motto of New Hampshire, "Live Free or Die," which is attributed to a quote from General John Stark. International trailers use the Die Hard 4.0 title,^[16] as the film was released outside North America with that title. Early into the DVD commentary for the film, both Wiseman and Willis note a preference for Die Hard 4.0, and subtly mock the Live Free or Die Hard title.^[17]

[edit] Visual effects

For the visual effects used throughout the film, actor Bruce Willis and director Len Wiseman stated that they wanted to use a limited amount of CGI.^[18] One VFX producer said that "Len was insisting on the fact that, because we’ve got Transformers and other big CG movies coming out, this one has to feel more real. It has to be embedded in some kind of practical reality in order to give it that edge of being a Die Hard."^[19] Companies such as Digital Dimension, The Orphanage, R!ot, Pixel Magic, and Amalgamated Pixels assisted in the visual effects of the film.^[19]

Digital Dimension worked on 200 visual effects shots in the film,^[20] including the sequence that shows characters John McClane and Matt Farrell crouching between two cars as another car lands on top of the other cars. To achieve this effect, a crane yanked the car and threw it in the air onto the two cars that were also being pulled by cables. The shot was completed when the two characters were integrated into the footage of the car stunt after the lighting was adjusted and CGI glass and debris were added.^[19] In the same sequence, John McClane drives a car into a hovering helicopter, which crashes to the ground. This was accomplished by first filming one take where an assassin with a rifle jumps from the helicopter, and in the next take the car is propelled into the stationary helicopter as it is hoisted by wires. The final view of the shot overlays the two takes, with added CGI for the debris and moving rotor blades.^[19] The company also assisted in adding cars for traffic collisions and masses of people for evacuations from several government buildings.^[20]

The Orphanage developed a multi-level freeway interchange for use in one of the final scenes of the film by creating a digital environment and a 1,000-foot long spiral ramp that was built in front of a bluescreen.^[21] When a F-35 jet is chasing McClane on the freeway, a miniature model and a full-size prop were both built to assist in digitally adding the jet into the scene.^[21][22] The nine-foot model was constructed from November 2006 through February 2007.^[21] When the jet is shown hovering near the freeway, editors used the software 3D graphics program Maya to blur the background and create a heat ripple effect.^[21]

[edit] Filming and injuries

Filming for Live Free or Die Hard started in downtown Baltimore, Maryland on September 23, 2006.^[23][24] The Social Security Datacenter exteriors were shot at Diamond Ranch High School in California.^[25] Eight different sets were built on a large soundstage for filming many scenes throughout the film.^[26] When recording the sound for the semi trailer used in one of the final scenes of the film, eighteen microphones were used to record the engine, tires, and damage to the vehicle.^[26] Post-production for the film only took sixteen weeks, when it was more common for similar films to use twenty-six weeks.^[26]

In order to prevent possible injuries and be in peak condition for the film, Willis worked out almost daily for several months prior to filming.^[27] Willis was injured January 24, 2007 during a fight scene, when he was kicked above his right eye by a stunt double for actress Maggie Q who was wearing stiletto heels. Willis described the event as "no big deal" but when Director Len Wiseman inspected his injury, he noticed that the situation was much more serious than previously thought- in the DVD commentary, Wiseman indicates in inspecting the wound that he could see bone. Willis was hospitalized and received seven stitches which ran through his right eyebrow and down into the corner of his eye. Due to the film's non-linear production schedule, these stitches can accidentally be seen in the scene where McClaine first delivers Matthew Farrel to Executive Director Bowman (Played by Cliff Curtis). During the Director commentary included on the DVD release, both Wiseman and Willis laugh during this scene - noting the clearly visible stitches and wondering why no one thought to cover them with makeup on the day of shooting.^[28]

Throughout filming, between 200 and 250 stunt people were used.^[26] Bruce Willis' stunt double, Larry Rippenkroeger, was knocked unconscious when he fell twenty-five feet from a fire escape to the pavement. Rippenkroeger suffered broken bones in his face, several broken ribs, a punctured lung, and fractures in both wrists. Due to his injuries, production was temporarily shut down. Willis picked up the tab at area hotels for Rippenkroeger's parents and visited him a number of times at the hospital.^[29]

[edit] Rating

The past three installments in the Die Hard series have all been rated R by the MPAA. Live Free or Die Hard, however, sparked controversy because it was edited to obtain a PG-13 rating. In some cases, character dialogue was cut or muted in post-production to reduce profanity. Director Len Wiseman commented on the rating, saying "It was about three months into it [production], and I hadn't even heard that it was PG-13...But in the end, it was just trying to make the best Die Hard movie, not really thinking so much about what the rating would be."^[17] Bruce Willis was upset with the studio's decision, stating, “I really wanted this one to live up to the promise of the first one, which I always thought was the only really good one.” to Vanity Fair. “That’s a studio decision that is becoming more and more common, because they’re trying to reach a broader audience. It seems almost a courageous move to give a picture an R rating these days. But we still made a pretty hardcore, smashmouth film.”^[30] Willis later confirmed that it was PG-13, but thought that viewers unaware that it was not an R-rated film would not suspect it in watching it, due to the level and intensity of the action, and the usage of some amount of profanity, albeit less than the previous films.^[31] He even claimed that this film was the best of the four by saying "It’s unbelievable. I just saw it last week. I personally think, it’s better than the first one."^[32]

[edit] Reception

As of December 2, 2007, the film had a score of 80% with a certified "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 183 reviews (147 Fresh, 36 Rotten)^[33] with the consensus being it is "an efficient, action-packed summer popcorn flick"^[34] and a score of a generally favorable 69% on Metacritic based on 34 reviews.^[35] The movie has also received generally favorable reviews in The Washington Post^[36] and IGN (who scored the movie as a four out of five stars).^[37] A review on IGN stated "Like the recent Rocky Balboa, this new Die Hard works as both its own story about an over-the-hill but still vital hero and as a nostalgia trip for those who grew up with the original films."^[37] On the television show Ebert & Roeper, film critic Richard Roeper and guest critic Katherine Tulich gave the film "Two Thumbs Up," with Richard Roeper stating that the film is "not the best or most exciting Die Hard, but it is a lot of fun", and remarking, "Willis is in top form in his career-defining role."^[38] Michael Medved gave the film three and a half out of four stars, opining, "a smart script and spectacular special effects make this the best Die Hard of 'em all."^[39] Lawrence Toppman of The Charlotte Observer stated: "I can safely say I've never seen anything as ridiculous as "Live Free or Die Hard." Toppman also claimed that the film had a lack of memorable villains and referred to John McClane as "just a bald Terminator with better one-liners".^[40]

Live Free or Die Hard made $9.1 million in its first day of release in 3,172 theaters,^[41] the best opening day take of any film in the Die Hard franchise (not taking inflation into account). On its opening weekend Live Free or Die Hard made $33.3 million ($48.3 million counting Wednesday and Thursday).^[42] As of December 2, 2007, Live Free or Die Hard has made $134.5 million domestically, and $247.6 million overseas, for a total of $383,109,500 million, making it the twelfth highest grossing film of 2007.^[1] It is currently the most successful movie in the franchise.^[43]

[edit] DVD and video game release

The high-definition Blu-ray Disc and DVD were released on October 29 in the United Kingdom,^[44] on October 31 in Hungary,^[45] November 20 in the US,^[46] and December 12 in Australia. The DVD topped rental and sales charts in its opening week of release in the U.S. and Canada.^[47][48] There is an unrated version and a theatrical version of the film. The Blu-Ray release features the PG-13 "theatrical" cut which runs at 128 minutes, while the Collector's Edition DVD includes the unrated and theatrical versions.

The DVD for the film is also the first ever to include an electronic copy of the film which can be played on a computer and can also be imported into several models of portable video players.^[49] (The Terminator 2: Judgment Day Extreme DVD included a high-definition Windows Media file of the film, but its playback was limited to Windows PCs only^[50]) Mike Dunn, a president for 20th Century Fox, stated "The industry has sold nearly 12 billion DVDs to date, and the release of Live Free or Die Hard is the first one that allows consumers to move their content to other devices."^[49] However, the Live Free or Die Hard DVD is incompatible with Mac OS X.^{[citation needed]}

Time magazine's Richard Corliss named it one of the Top 10 DVDs of 2007, ranking it at #10.^[51]

A video game based on the film appeared on the ESRB ratings board for the Xbox 360.^[52] Kotaku has speculated that the game might become a Xbox Live Arcade title.^[53] A cell phone game based on the film was also released on July 26, 2007.^[54]

[edit] Soundtrack

Main article: Live Free or Die Hard (soundtrack)

The score for Live Free or Die Hard, written by Marco Beltrami, was released on July 2, 2007 by Varese Sarabande (the previous Die Hard soundtracks' label), several days after the U.S. release of the film. Other songs in the film include "Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival and "I'm So Sick" by Flyleaf. "Goth (Remix)" from 615 Music & Craig Sharmat, "Cycler" from RipTide Music, "War Zone" from audiomachine, "Rankle" from X-Ray Dog, "Adrenaline Surge" from Future World Music, "Suicide Mission" from Wild Whirled, "The Name of the Game" from The Crystal Method, "Ode to Joy" from Sorman Nystrom, "Full Throttle Part #2" from Static, "Swooshes and Rises" from Distortion Music were in the trailer for the film.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Live Free or Die Hard at the Internet Movie Database
• Live Free or Die Hard at Cinema and Science
• Live Free or Die Hard at Rotten Tomatoes
• Live Free or Die Hard soundtrack questions/answers at the SoundtrackINFO project
• Live Free or Die Hard at Metacritic
• "A Farewell to Arms", the Wired article on which the movie's script was based
• Live Free or Die Hard trailer at Yahoo! Movies
• Live Free or Die Hard Article detailing the differences between the PG-13 and Unrated cuts.
• Detailed Comparison between Unrated Cut and Theatrical Cut with pictures

v • d • e Die Hard series Die Hard • Die Hard 2 • Die Hard with a Vengeance • Live Free or Die Hard Video games Die Hard • Arcade • Trilogy • Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas • Nakatomi Plaza • Vendetta Related articles John McClane • Fox Plaza • Nothing Lasts Forever • Val Verde

v • d • e The Films of Len Wiseman Underworld Trilogy Underworld (2003) • Underworld: Evolution (2006) • Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (in development) Other films Live Free or Die Hard (2007)