Crime Never Pays

I went to see “Live Free or Die Hard” today. Once again John McClane takes on overwhelming odds to stop a band of high-tech crooks from stealing a bazillion dollars. The plot is basically the same as the first two movies: the crooks start by doing something that misdirects the police and FBI so they’re chasing their tails while the crooks take a ginormous chunk of someone else’s money. John accidentally discovers their evil plot and sets out to stop them while dealing with a personal issue at the same time. Of course the personal issue comes in the form of some misfiring relationship. This time it’s his daughter, Lucy. It's a typical father daughter issue: dad doesn't want his daughter to get felt up by some over stimulated dude in a sports car, and the daughter wants to make her own choice of whether or not to be felt up. Thankfully by the end of the movie they’ve reconciled and become a great father/daughter team again. It only takes two hours of wasting bad guys, cuts, scraps, punches, bullets, explosions and what seemed like a few gallons of John’s blood. Oy, I think it would have been easier to go to counseling!

I liked the movie, as I do most Bruce Willis movies, and he’s back in his element for this flick. Of course I’m not one of those guys that like nothing but blowing up stuff and shooting everyone in sight. Violence permeates the movie industry right now. I didn't realize how much until I went to Blockbuster a few months ago. I hadn't been to a video store in over a year. Don’t get me wrong, I love video stores, but I’m a progressive guy and I’d been getting my flicks via pay-per-view. But one night I didn't like what was available so my wife and I got in the car and trudged over to Blockbuster. It was so… 2005 of us!

I walked around the store perusing the current offerings from Hollywood and it didn’t take long to notice a trend; there were more horror movies than I’d ever seen before. Not just scary movies either, they had a common theme of graphic violence, sadistic torture and perverse treatment of other people.

I’d seen commercials about some of these movies, like “The Hills Have Eyes” and “Hostel”. What surprised me though was the large number of movies like these. I was honestly taken aback at how quickly the movies on the shelves of my beloved Blockbuster had changed. In the course of only a year, Hollywood had incorporated this steady diet of murder and mayhem into our lives. It’s a testament to the truths revealed in the Bible and how our society will continue to spiral into darkness.

However, I am a guy, so I admit that some explosions and a few bad guys getting capped is a good day for me.

I gave the movie an “A-” because it did what it set out to do: prove that good will triumph over evil even in the face of enormous odds. And once again America can sleep in the knowledge that John McClane has saved us all from destruction.