Die Hard 4.0

Hah. Bet you never thought I would go to see one of these, did you? Well, up here in Ísafjörður there is actually a movie theater that shows films Thursday through Monday. They have matinées for the kiddos on the weekend with a speaker speaking in the Icelandic over the English. Not good for me, although I would have liked to see Ratatoullie.

Last week war Transformer, I decided to wait a week. It got worse, the choice this week was Die Hard 4.0. Or Icelandic TV, which is like US TV, only worse. They choose the worst of German, US, and English TV, and everything about fish. And then pepper it with advertising and sub-titles. Since tonight was a nice film about tuna fishing on TV, I figured I would go for the movie. It was about computers, wasn't it?

Well, yes. Former US computer specialist is fired, is now determined to show the country its soft underbelly. He can get into all systems, and bring them down. But never fear, Bruce Willis is here, with more lives than a cat. He saves the last hacker who can help, and together they save the country and Bruce' lovely daughter. Along the way a lot of things get blown up, a lot of cars get smashed, an airplane that can fly through bridge columns gets smashed, and a lot of people get killed.

Bruce and his side-kick get wounded a lot, but it is rather amusing to see the wounds come and go. I think they forgot to hire a continuity editor. I eventually begin to see bits of the Gisli Saga in the movie, which makes it a lot more fun, Gisli and his wife were able to kill 8 others in that final battle, you see, just like Bruce.

The computer stuff was awesome. Nokia mobile phones; rollable keyboards; suitcases with multiple color screens that flip up when the suitcase is opened; biiiiiig flat screens, lots and lots and lots of them. The two Palms just mystified me, however. What were they doing with them, checking off their task lists? Mine is a great address book and alarm clock and a nasty opponent at backgammon, but can you cause mass system failure with a Palm?

The software was kind of silly - the screens were either bunches of numbers, or TTY-type terminals flashing login codes, or fancy maps and videos and stuff. One funny scene at Warlord's basement - Bruce puts his finger over the camera to ask Warlord something, but of course that doesn't kill the mike. The nasty opponent makes a sarcastic remark to this effect.

These guys can trace anything, anytime, get into anywhere with phony FBI suits and ID cards. In times of an emergency, anyone who says they are FBI probably is. And as one character says: they needed 5 days during Katrina to get water to the Superdome. The US systems, computer and human, are broken, terminally.

Some observations:

1. Even if we have all these surveillance cameras just to find the "bad ones" and the government is always going to be a "good" government (cough, cough, cough), if the bad guys can penetrate their system, then they can use all this stuff for their own deeds, as shown in the movie.
2. When the mobile phones go out, you are hosed, unless you still have a ham radio outfit working.
3. If you are planning on stealing millions of digital dollars, you won't actually be able to cash it in if you trash the financial system while you are at it. Bits aren't gold.
4. Even though Icelanders pay a pretty penny to see the movie (about 9,50 €), they get popcorn and chips and cokes both before the film and during the break, and they rustle in their bags the entire film. That's why the film has to be turned up so loud, I suppose. The advertising was nice, though - just slides for the next films and the one clothing shop in town. They had to cycle though it many times.
5. Icelanders can't read - even I could figure out that one of the slides said: Don't dump your garbage on the floor, put it in the garbage can!!!!! And there were BIG garbage cans at the end of the rows. But they still just dropped everything.

Some questions:

1. Can planes fly down the lower level of a double-decker highway?
2. What was in the final truck Bruce was driving and why?
3. Where did all his guns come from? He always had a new one.
4. Why was there always a drivable car available for Bruce?
5. How many flights can he fall down and not get killed? How often can he get wounded and not get killed?
6. How did the hacker guy get all that cool equipment into his tiny shoulder bag?
7. How can you drive a car up to the 4th floor in order to smash it into people?
8. What are the physics of smashing up a car just so that it manages to down a helicopter?
9. If there are all these wrecked and burning cars all over the place, why are there no dead drivers anywhere?

Enough questions, time for bed. Got class tomorrow early!