Movie snobs come in all shapes and sizes, some refuse to admit they might enjoy any mainstream film. "Kill Bill? Yawn. Toy Story? How juvenile. Iron Man? Must be a bourgeoisie classic by now."
Do not confuse me with one of those people.
Ask someone who knows me, get me started about what I like and/or don't like about any movie I've ever seen, I will talk your head clean off at the neck.
I just watched Live Free or Die Hard, the movie which scientifically examines the all-time greatest question ever asked, its answer brutally debated in bar-fights, a question with its own fatalities. Just how much ass can one man kick?
John McClane seeks to silence all debate on the subject.
I haven't seen the other Die Hard movies, not because I think I'm too good for them or anything, simply haven't gotten around to it yet. I came into this one half an hour late, though my tardiness helped me appreciate it even more.
Art films and indie films (anything my more pretentious college classmates might call "real cinema") require set up. Come in halfway through the movie and you have no hope of understanding it. Suck it up and hope you'll see some tits or ass before the credits roll.
Action movies like this one (when they're done right) allow you to jump in at any point and immediately know good from bad. They create a simpler world, a brief respite from the shades of gray complexity of reality, one where the best, if only, solution to your conflicts with other people is to simply kill them. (What would happen to "The Office" if the characters applied the same sensibilities? Sounds like a great idea for November Sweeps!)
Ultimately, I found the evolving role of action heroes the most fascinating aspect of Live Free or Die Hard. Take this quote for example:
Fuck being a hero. You know what you get for being a hero? Nothin'. You get shot at. You get a little pat on the back, blah blah blah, attaboy. You get divorced. Your wife can't remember your last name. Your kids don't want to talk to you. You get to eat a lot of meals by yourself. Trust me, kid, nobody wants to be that guy.-John McClane
McClane puts his life on the line for an ungrateful society and gets nothing for it. His wife divorced him, his children shun him and he lives in massive debt. This modern day Job's stalwart faith in the society that does little to reward him strikes a chord in many of us. It hearkens back to the ideal of another time in which the good of our society lived on a higher pedestal than our inidvidual self-interest. It is a fitting end to the climax as McClane shoots a gun through himself in order to kill the antagonist, thus resolving the film in a heroic gesture of self sacrifice for a greater good.
We live our lives surrounded by real heroes in the vein of John McClane. Perhaps they cannot take out a helicopter with a ballistic police car, or hold their own against a "kung fu hooker bitch." They are our servicemen, who put life and limb on the line for a government that doesn't bother to give them body armor; who come home to protesters who call them baby killers and blame these brave individuals as if they caused a war. They are our teachers, who take low paying jobs in our public schools for the sake of kids who often don't want the gift they work hard to give. They are our policemen, whom nearly all of us refer to with derogatory names, who make it safe to walk the streets at night. The fact that these issues are reflected to any degree in mainstream cinema is noteworthy.
While it wasn't an oscar-worthy challenge of acting, it was a great story, well told by the director. But beyond the higher minded issues of the modern hero, it was fun.
Back to those classmates I knew college who felt they were smarter than the average movie-goer; they probably skipped Live Free or Die Hard. It's ironic, they embody the selfish sensibility that they are more important than society by pretending they are smarter than everyone else, and by failing to appreciate the contributions of real life heroes all around them. Perhaps enjoying mainstream films once in a while might show them that there are some popular values in our movies that might still be worth hanging on to; chiefly among them that making a movie fun and entertaining does not go hand in hand with making it stupid.
Yippi-kay-ay, Mutherfuckers!
