By Vic Holtreman

Short version: A fun, (almost) gritty & wild ride with Bruce Willis easily slipping back into his trademark role.

If you’re wondering whether or not to see Live Free or Die Hard I suppose you might be asking two questions:

“Is Die Hard 4 good enough to become a member of the ‘Die Hard’ club?”

“Would it have been better if it were rated R?”

The answer to both questions is: Yes.

Purists (Is there such a thing as a Die Hard purist?) may be disappointed by the trimming required to bring Live Free or Die Hard down to a PG-13 rating, but I’m here to tell you that the movie still works despite that.

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The movie blogosphere is going nuts due to the following quote by Bruce Willis in the June issue of Vanity Fair:

“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. 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.”

This story appeared initially at AICN where there is currently (as usual) a huge uproar over the possibility of the movie getting a PG-13 rating instead of an R. Personally, I try to stay away from the talkback area of that site due to the type of rabble that leaves comments there. For the most part it’s the sort of person who says that an equivalent punishment for making a bad superhero movie would be to subject a director to the sort of thing you see in the Saw or Hostel movies as a real, actual punishment.

It seems that Live Free or Die Hard, the long awaited fourth film in the Die Hard movie series is king of online movie buzz so far this year. This is according to the number of mentions of upcoming movies in blog as tracked by Nielsen BuzzMetrics.

Die Hard 4.0 (as I prefer to call it) even beat out mentions of Spider-Man 3 by 2 to 1, which I find very surprising.

Click on the above image to see a MUCH better trailer for Live Free or Die Hard. It’s the English language international version of the trailer and it concentrates more on the story (what a concept!) and less on the over the top action sequences. It feels much more like a Die Hard movie than the superhero-ish trailer released recently.

Yahoo Movies has the latest (and I presume, final) trailer for the new Bruce Willis flick Live Free Or Die Hard, aka Die Hard 4.0. Click on the image above to see it in a variety of sizes and formats.

Here’s the brand new trailer for Die Hard 4 or Live Free and Die Hard that’s been appearing and disappearing online.

Looks like it’s right in line with the previous three movies and I’m really happy to see Bruce Willis back in the role that’s my personal favorite for him. Of course since he’s getting a bit up there age-wise they just HAD to bring in a couple of “20-somethings” in the form of a hot girl and a guy to co-star (similar to what they did with the last Blade movie, which stank). I guess the studio figures that young audiences can’t relate to a 51 year old action hero without having some folks their own age in there as well.

Like, whatEVER.

In any case, the trailer look cool and it has more action shots than alcoholics at a AA meeting.

Enjoy…