Movie Review: Live Free or Die Hard

Finally, a summer movie worthy of your popcorn dollars. Bruce Willis and his action franchise are a little old, and as Life Free or Die Hard begins, Houstonist found ourselves worrying that maybe they were both a little worn around the edges. Then, Bruce, with help from Justin Long (Dodgeball) and Kevin Smith (yes, that Kevin Smith) proceeded to prove us ass-kickingly, wise-crackingly wrong.
And it was good. See, the bad guys have totally crushed the country's infrastructure, and along the way they threatened Bruce Willis' daughter...and then they shot at him a lot!

See, call us crazy, but we like even our explosion-happy movies to have a little plot. This one not only manages to have a story, it actually raises some interesting questions about how our society is run. Are we too dependent on computers? How vulnerable are we to creative sorts of attacks on our technology? Does the government do it's part to protect us?

And when you get tired of thinking about that, you can go back to waiting for the next explosion, like the one where Bruce kills a helicopter with a car. It'll be there, since ultimately there are more stunts than plot. And it'll be pretty awesome, because that's exactly how summer popcorn movies should be.

Grade: B+