"Live Free" a critique of government ineptitude, indifferent to rest of the world's people
Live Free or Die Hard
Starring Bruce Willis
20th Century Fox
130 minutes
Rated PG-13
2007
Reviewed 2007 July 27
"Live Free or Die Hard" is a patriotic action movie with an amerikan hero. It makes you wonder why bother reviewing it. So, yeah, there is a cheap dig against Lenin in this movie. The terrorists have read their Lenin or at least can quote him for dramatic effect among other so-called dictators. The movie doesn't get more political than that. "Live Free" is yet another way for amerikans to play out their aggressive impulses through fantasy. Some do it with "Spider-Man" and other comic book movies, others with movies evoking 9/11 more directly. The last "Die Hard" movie was released twelve years ago, and "Live Free" comes almost years six after 9/11. As John McClane says, it's been a while since he's killed. Imperialism has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the meantime, but never mind that.
What's most interesting about this movie content-wise revolves around main character John McClane. It's also an example of why people thinking about how amerikan society works should pay attention to popcorn movies like "Live Free," with hero characters more ordinary or down-to-earth than James Bond, and not dismiss them as lowbrow entertainment. The "Fantastic Four" movies may be for young middle-class people to fantasize themselves as heroes, but "Live Free" reflects the anxieties of the Euro-Amerikan white so-called working class and other amerikans uncertain about their economic and political position in the world. That's what "Live Free" is about, regardless of the intentions of those who made the movie.
John McClane (Bruce Willis) is a ranking detective. He's also a New York cop. It's a thankless job; so, he's estranged from his daughter and has to pick up some hacker kid in the middle of the night because the FBI had a computer break-in and is doing a round-up. The computer programmer character Matt Farrell (Justin Long) stands in contrast to McClane to make McClane look computer illiterate and oblivious to technology. The movie's plot revolves around a "fire sale," an attack to bring down the country's entire "system" by hacking critical points. Where Farrell comes in is that he unwittingly provides a service to the hackers. At the beginning of their attack, the hacker group tries to kill Farrell and others who might be able to reverse what they're doing. It's not exactly "War Games." There are plenty of opportunities for kick-ass action, gun blasts and explosions because of the hackers' activities on the ground.
McClane's frustration with the computer technology and jargon and the seeming generational gap between himself and Farrell is obvious. Less obvious is that the movie is a critique of the u.$. government's handling of the country's "security" from the point of view of the labor aristocracy so-called working class and the middle class. It comes through in the words of the bad-guy leader of the hacker group, but "Live Free" will cause viewers to think about the topic the villain raises about reliance on computer and communications technology and inadequate security. Even with the offhand Lenin quip, "Live Free" isn't a particularly anti-communist movie and has to do with more things than that. (Viewers may have heard that Bush's supporters are "useful idiots" (in the term's generalized use), which obscures underlying issues of power.) The labor aristocracy has particular white nationalist reasons for wanting to repress migrants and opposing imports and some other aspects of trade, but "Live Free" belongs in the same category as people stoking up fears about the border, port security, disease, food contamination, imports, and what-if scenarios involving nuclear weapons and terrorist attacks. Despite the unrealistic things in "Live Free," sensationalized accounts of dangers posed by hackers particularly in foreign countries to u.$. computer systems have appeared in the mainstream media in recent years. The amerikan majority wants to be certain that its comfortable lifestyles won't be interrupted. The real dynamic of what's going on is more militarism and repression and more exploitation of Third World workers, not concern about security in any particular place or aspect.
Early on, McClane is there to mock Farrell's ideas about the mainstream media and corporate control. It gives Farrell just enough lefty tinge so when Farrell fights against the hackers with McClane and fights on behalf of the "country," the effect is more pronounced. Farrell is against corporate control, but he is still a patriot. Farrell is so individualist and independent, but instead of letting the attackers get away with the fire sale, he -- shock -- chooses to save the country and his lifestyle. Farrell may be a naive computer nerd, but he figures things out. Farrell's role is to bring up the rear of the petty-bourgeois critique of government incompetence, to appeal to youth. McClane, Farrell and McClane's daughter Lucy all end up on the same side. It has to be said, though, that "Live Free" points out a reality: at the end of the day, the labor aristocracy and other petty-bourgeois critics of corporations and the government still prop up imperialism. With the different characters McClane and Farrell, "Live Free" generates support for imperialism from two angles: mainstream and anti-mainstream.
It's hard to say if Farrell's comment about the media and corporations is really political. There are fascist opponents of corporations who basically want to replace them with their own monopoly capital. And there are lots of critics of corporations and the mainstream media ("MSM" on the Internet) whose reasons are individualist if not openly siding with imperialism and stoking up the most extreme forms of reaction. Does Farrell's comment reflect a real power struggle is the key question. Like intellectuals and professionals in the First World, many hackers are very individualist and though apathetic may end up functioning as appendages of exploitation. Farrell may not have cared who is clients were, but most of the time he would have been serving exploitation. Other hackers may make a project out of serving specific interests and become vigilantes collaborating with the u.$. government. It would be wrong to think all hackers are of a particular political stripe -- even liberal or conservative; although, most of u.$. politics is an argument over how to share the wealth stolen from the Third World.
In its international aspect, "Live Free" slanders amerika's enemies by portraying them as disgruntled or selfish individualists. To the extent that there is inter-imperialist rivalry and an individualist national bourgeoisie in the Third World, "Live Free" is partly right, but that's actually how amerikans see themselves, and they impose those categories on others regardless of appropriateness. If someone opposes amerika, it must be because they are "jealous." In this fictional story, a significant number of the people working with the Thomas Gabriel/Maggie Q villain duo are trained in combat and speak French to give the movie an international spy thriller feel, but leader Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) is from the united $tates. It is a reflection of an arrogant amerikan viewpoint that an amerikan would betray amerika only if they were disgruntled or maybe just peverse about everything, like in the FBI movie "Breach" (2007). "Live Free" actually has a point; for the most part, amerikans acting against amerika's interests wouldn't be doing so because of oppressed class consciousness. The vast majority of amerikans are exploiters and oppressors.
Since Gabriel's exact motives (money, trying to make a point about security, maybe trying to impress his girlfriend) aren't really clarified, the movie justifies repression and security fears in a very general way. For that matter, it's hard to imagine anyone thinking "Live Free" is a good thing for the hacker community unless they are one of those anti-small terrorist/anti-"extremist" hacker vigilantes or working in the employ of the u.$. government. According to the movie, incompetence breeds (more) corruption, but the movie legitimizes spying on u.$. citizens by mixing in foreigners.
At one point, viewers learn that the government has secrets above FBI cyber-security deputy director Bowman's (Cliff Curtis) "pay grade." The worst case is the movie lends support to warrantless surveillance, or illustrate why some people think it is necessary, to protect secrets. With a large spying budget in the first place, surveillance in general becomes a widely used tool of repression. Hopefully, "Live Free" will redeem itself with some viewers by highlighting government lack of transparency, but don't hold your breath for fictional movies like "Live Free" (or "Transformers," a sci-fi action movie with alien/UFO-type government secrets) to lead to a Liberal uprising. It will just cause a little bit of cognitive dissonance. For the vast majority of viewers, that message will be drowned out by the movie's patriotism. Individualist amerikans don't care about secrets and lies except those they know about and are embarrassed by. They can live their decadent lives with wars going on around them, and structurally it works out for them because the gravy train is never really interrupted.
Strategically, "Live Free" is also a dud. As far as any strategic lessons that could be drawn in the context of this movie, the only one is that activists should be concerned about electronic and camera surveillance, and they should know that governments do employ people with varying levels of hacking expertise for spying. What is important is the principles involved, not whether it is specifically possible to hack into an elevator camera like in the movie or something else. The little bit about Lenin and "useful idiots" (a misattribution) in the movie is just a provocation. Gabriel applies it to people who have power if not intelligence. In a sense, an oppressor class can only be divided and manipulated until it is defeated, but that presumes a large outside force able to put the ball in the hole themselves. Only the international proletariat and class struggle in the economic, social, political and cultural spheres can end imperialism.