Dan's Papers - July 13, 2007 - Guy de Fraumeni's Hollywod in The Hamptons

I'll cry tomorrow. No, I won't, I'll cry now. A tearful "Boo-hoo and, a sturdy, "Yippie-kai-yay-kai-oh!, for the two most quintessential, red, white and blue American movie types: The Hankie movie (Boo-hoo) and the Action Movie (exemplified by Bruce Willis as N.Y.C. Police Detective John McClane and his war cry, "Yippie Kai-yay.") Mr. Willis returns to his seminal action hero role of 1995s Die Hard With a Vengeance for a fourth, Live Free or Die Hard. Willis, the aging veteran, comes back, again, with a vengeance for sure - it's a four alarm clanger. Also returning with a deadly vengeance is the current American as apple pie Hankie movie, Evening. Stalwart veterans Vanessa Redgrave (playing gravely ill), Glenn Close, Meryl Streep and a few other master heart string players in concert, rhapsodize in misery and earnestly edge with a rope-like lace, a monumental 4 Hankie movie capable of flooding the theatre. Mass suicide of the audience is a distinct possibility.

For us Man-children, Live Free is a joy. Oh, happy day. The over-the-hill, last Action Hero beats out the computer age. As said of him, "He's a Timex watch in a digital age." Happily, as directed by Len Wisemam, the movements of the film are old-fashioned, too. Rascally stunts are done by real live brave folks, not pencil-necked nerds hunched over Macs creating effects that have never tasted a lead pencil point. Live Free's over-the-top, incredible feats are more incredible because you see human flesh tweaked by the crunching metal. Willis's body seems in good shape at the advanced age of 52. He hasn't much hair on his head but, the symbolic hair-on-the chest is wiry and well-planted. He can still deflect harm laconically. When the rotten guy says, "I thought I killed you already", he flips back, "Yeah, I get that a lot." As I am an analog kind of a guy, I love his macho, zany guts-do-all-the-work to penetrate the fourth wall of computer technology. His bullet-bald head seems more incisive than his brains, but don't compromise his thought processes. Irresponsibility shouldn't be mistaken for stupidity. It is often considered bravery.

This movie's story reminds us that before terrorism was imported into the United States, we had plenty of the homegrown variety: Nuts like Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski and, the anthrax deliverer through the mail and, the sicko who tainted Tylenol, making packaging impossible to open. Live Free's disgruntled American turned villain is a former federal government computer wizard who devised the perfect security program but was taken down because he showed how vulnerable we are. Now, he gives the government payback by showing them what would happen if all computers were screwed up - it would cause a national meltdown. Total chaos is Gabriel's evil aim and, as portrayed by Timothy Olyphant, his aim is right on target: a clean-cut, attractive professional, a perfect foil for the wise cracking, knuckle sandwich provider to any and all bad guys. Like Willis, the movie is a dinosaur throwback to the earlier, over-active action movies where the American sacred cow, the automobile, was sacrificed freely for the helluvit.

My goodness! The formidable cast of acting divas in the florid gravitas of Evening could match the muscle power of a John McClane, if it were not for the too soggy cream puff treatment of material already melting down like our traffic grids in Live Free or Die Hard. Adapted from the 1998 novel by Susan Minot, the flash-back memories of a lingering deathbed woman portrayed by Vanessa Redgrave gives new meaning to the phrase "Die Hard." The dying woman's thoughts carp back mostly to a love affair lost a long time ago. The lover who got away should be credited, he is Patrick Wilson, soon trammeled by the performances of the daughters seated at her bedside - they are Vanessa's own daughter, Natasha and Toni Collette. Toni is the neurotic daughter and I wondered why Vanessa's other daughter, Joely, didn't get cast. She may've been tied up on the set of "Nip/Tuck." At any rate, the girls wonder, as they argue, whether they will wind up like mom whose thoughts keep slipping back to those sorrowful-fated days in the 1950s when she, now played by Claire Danes (who bears as little resemblance too Vanessa as Bruce Willis) meets Patrick at the wedding of a college friend, done so nicely by Mamie Gummer whose own mom, Meryl Streep, shows up later as Mamie, the elder. Whew, got it?

The Hungarian director, Lajo's Koltai, heavily whips the cream to its ultimate squishiness. And, all that feminine power? Seems like those old episodes of "Love Boat" where all the stars you thought had passed on, made guest cameo appearances.

Guy Jean de Fraumeni is the producer/writer/director of award winning European and American feature films. He has been a judge at Major Film and TV award competitions, including the Oscars, the Emmy's and various film festivals. Sarah Halsey assists him.