A Tale of Two Sequels


Ok, so that WAS the title of this post, then I saw "Die Hard 4.0" last night. So now it's THREE sequels. Talk about your range of quality.


"Rocky Balboa" was far better than I expected -- it's basically a remake of "Rocky", but it's very good. Kudos to Sly for not trying to make Rock seem all that bright or trying to cover up the plethora of plastic in his face & body. It's well-done, but I could've lived with at least one scene of Rocky punching his chump son.


"Rush Hour 3" somehow managed to not even live up to my expectations of a craptacular movie. Hoo boy. I laughed maybe 3 times. One of the laughs as for the line (from a Frenchman), "I will never be an American; I will never know what it feels like to shoot someone for no reason."


And the latecomer? "Die Hard 4.0" was ok, but not only did it seem to try to top the previous three Die Hards, it also seemed to be topping itself. The last action scene would have been very hard to believe if Spiderman or Yoda were trying it but John McClane? Why couldn't they realize that the 1st Die Hard was great because it was one man against all odds with implausible but almost believable stunts? But this one? No. Personally, I blame George Bush. Since most of America was dumb enough to "believe" that Hussein and Al Qaeda were connected, moviemakers think we'll believe any line of BS as long as it involves explosions.