Day: July 7, 2007

• It’s entertaining enough, but what Scott Tobias says here about Bruce Willis’ John McClane — “He was human back in 1988; now he’s the Terminator.” — is really true. I liked him a lot better in 1988.
• I was amused by the “certain original characters by” credit at the beginning for Roderick Thorp. At this point, I think the connection is pretty tenuous to Thorp’s original novel, even if the original Die Hard was based on it. After all, John McClane isn’t even John McClane in the book; he’s Joe Leland. But I guess the credit is there for legal reasons.
• I haven’t read it, but apparently the film is based in large part on this 1997 article from Wired. Apparently an adaptation of the article has been in development for a number of years, and the whole Die Hard angle was a pretty late addition. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t show.
• Pakour is really cool, and all, but it’s almost impossible for it to not look fake on screen. Maybe that’s because we’re jaded by modern special effects — if a computer can generate any image, then every image will look fake — but the simple truth is this: even when people can move like that, my first thought is, hey! people can’t move like that!
• I think it would be silly and over-reacting to call misogyny or racism, but there’s something about how Maggie Q‘s character gets treated — as the kung-fu bitch, essentially — that didn’t sit well with me.

I saw it right after seeing Sicko, too, which led to the weird thought of hoping John McClane has good health insurance. But none of the things that happen to him seem to actually happen to him, so maybe it doesn’t matter. (Is getting shot at a pre-existing condition?)

Sicko is extremely good, and if there’s any justice it will lead to a real honest discussion of our broken health care system and, possibly, reform. It will definitely get people thinking about moving abroad should they actually become ill. The Guantanamo Bay sequence, which has probably gotten the strongest reaction from both left and right, is problematic. It’s a stunt, obviously, and the basic idea, that the sick 9/11 rescue workers deserve just as much health care as the inmates at Gitmo, is tough to dispute. But I felt like it played into idea that the prisoners held at Guantanamo all belong there, that they are all evildoers. If they can get free health care… Whereas there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that many of the prisoners are not terrorists. It’s not a terrible sequence, and I’m not sure that it ultimately hurts the film or Moore’s position, but it is a little problematic.

The footage in Cuba that follows it, however, is incredibly effective.