Upstream - KJB Holiday Special 4: Die Hard 4.0 Live Free or Die Hard

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

It's the holiday season once again, so we're back with KJB Christmas Staple John McClane to check out yet another Die Hard movie. This time, John's wife is long gone. The Family he fought so hard to prove himself to in the previous movies want nothing to do with him. Maybe what he needs to do is focus on his work and bring in the fucking 1337 h4x0r that the FBI have just asked him to have a word with. Happy Holidays, from our podcast family to your real family. Or just to you, if your family sucks. ----- Check out friend of the show Mattie's new book Simplicity here, or wherever fine graphic novels are sold! ----- FREE PALESTINE Hey, Devon here. In our home, we talk a lot about how insane everything feels, and agonise constantly over what can be done to best help the Palestinians trapped in Gaza facing the full brunt of genocidal violence. My partner Rebecca has put together a list of four fundraisers you can contribute to- all of them are at work on the ground doing what they can. -Palestinian Communist Youth Union, which is doing a food and water effort, and is part of the official communist party of Palestine https://www.gofundme.com/f/to-preserve-whats-left-of-humanity-global-solidarity -Water is Life, a water distribution project in North Gaza affiliated with an Indigenous American organization and the Freedom Flotilla https://www.waterislifegaza.org/ -Vegetable Distribution Fund, which secured and delivers fresh veg, affiliated with Freedom Flotilla also https://www.instagram.com/linking/fundraiser?fundraiser_id=1102739514947848 -Thamra, which distributes herb and veg seedlings, repairs and maintains water infrastructure, and distributes food made with replanted veg patches https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-thamra-cultivating-resilience-in-gaza ----- WEB DESIGN ALERT Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com , as well as on our Bluesky and X.com the every app account

You there, boy, what day is this? Why, sir, it is Bond mistake? Oh, ho, ho, merry bondsmas to all of you out there in podcast land. Merry Bondsmas, listener. Bondsmas Eve? Then the Blofelds have done it all in one night. There's still time. Hello, and welcome to a beautiful, seasonal episode of Kill James Bond.

Happy holidays. It is the Christmas episode. I am November Kelly. I am joined, as always, by my fellow ghosts of Christmas, past and future, respectively, Abigail Thorne and Devin. Hello, listener. How are you doing? I guess we're all kind of Ghosts of Christmas present in that we're presenting our Christmas film to you. The Ghost of Christmas podcast.

Interesting, yeah. Ghost of podcasts yet to be. And the ghost showed me a Zencaster page that I was logged into and it was my name on the login credentials. Dear God, what have I done? What will I do? so yes we've done three die hard films now

in a row for three Christmases and for our fourth Christmas together I thought we would switch things up a little bit by doing die hard for so the bit is not coming really to fruition with these next two years because nothing to do with Christmas this is not even a film which is in no way

a Christmas movie they saved the holiday weekend at one point and I went oh but it's the 4th of July holiday week I would not be further from Christmas Absolutely, absolutely. And so this is Die Hard 4 or Die Hard 4.0 because this is the one where, in the words of America's greatest president, Donald J. Trump, everything's computer. Everything's computer.

Everything's computer. I was so excited when I saw that everything's computer. And they fucking tell you right away, first frame of this basically is like a guy on a computer, he's hacking. And on the screen it says like password. hacking like dot dot dot algorithm as a progress bar yes here we go it sort of makes me want to do a little mini hacking season because it made me miss the film swordfish the worst hacking i knew the movie's going to be this because this movie came out in 2007 listeners which was a very specific time after the matrix and but before the 2008 financial crash when so many movies

and like the matrix sequels were still coming out so many movies including this just like got really envious of the Matrix and you can feel this movie like hating the Matrix but also like really wanting to be the Matrix as well Yeah, sort of an egg movie in that way I mean one thing I think this movie thinks about the Matrix is that movie is when you do

really intense color grading because you know how the Matrix is very like green wash of it. Yeah, yeah this is almost unwatchable because they just knock every color out of it except like browns and

yellows. I think the fact that it is the 4th of July like holiday weekend really drives at home because the previous diehard movie was also a summer movie and they took their time to make it look as hot as possible like there was like boiling whereas this it's cold. It's like weirdly

green. It's it's grotesque looking in places honestly disgusting a little bit. Because they're trying to be the Matrix. Fantastic. Yeah it looks very very strange and it's like very contrasty and it's just kind of

unpleasant to watch in a few different ways we'll get into this though because I will say as we were locking in to watch this together my wife Gwen I love my wife she is the savior of this episode and the next episode Gwen all hell Gwen immediately immediately prior

I'm a big fan of Gwen so am I but immediately prior to recording I in the course of cleaning the office knocked the Rooter off of its kind of perch and it just took a five-foot fall onto, I mean, carpet, but it just took out the whole internet. She fixed it last moment. I love my wife.

She is a perfect angel and a wonderful engineer. I just need you to know that to contextualize that she said the most insane sentence I have ever heard in my life when we were sitting down to watch this. She says, unprompted, oh, this is the only diehard I've ever seen. What? What are you talking about?

How could that possibly be the case? I don't know. This is the worst one we've yet seen as well. I feel sorry for Gwen. Yeah, so do I. I want to introduce her to the magic of Die Hard 1. Die Hard 2. Die Hard 2.

Even Die Hard 3 is pretty good. Die Hard 3 is pretty good. Die Hard 3 is right. Diehard 3, genuinely. But instead, she only got the hack of one. Your wife should come over to my house and we'll watch Die Hard. sure that's fine we'll all sit on a big sofa together and watch die hard

yeah this is the other thing you need to know about this episode is that we're drinking and that situation is only going to get worse I would say I'm normal at this stage but I'm ready I'm ready to go someone gets exploded right away so before anyone gets exploded

we've got to know that like everything's computer the way we know that everything's computer is that they hack the 20th century Fox logo Fuck they do yeah that's why I stood up and was like it's computers yes

no more intro thing and then they glitched it a bit and all of all of the credits are like all caps Bruce vertical stroke no caps Willis amazing

which is just beautiful stylistic choice because it's on the computer some dudes are hacking and one of the dudes who's hacking is Justin Long who is appearing in this movie as not Neo from the Matrix

yes he's in the Neo room, like, there's loud music playing, there's like loads of screens, there's code and shit. He's in the near room. He looks a bit like they kind of zamped Adam Driver. Yeah. And he's on voice chat. He's on voice chat with Maggie Q.

And he's writing an algorithm for her and he's submitting, he's sending it to her. And he, like, sexually harasses her as men on voice chat often do. He's like, you've got a sexy voice. Yeah, it kind of gives you the, like, quickest timer from first appearance to sex pest, outside.

of a Eurosfly movie that we've seen it's like a 0.003 seconds like an F1 hit stop. He's just like you got a sexy voice and she's like thank you for voice training. It's like I've never seen numbers like this since Roger Moore. I'm looking up on my wall but I've got a big frame picture of Roger Moore. Number one sex person

of the podcast. Solomely taking it down and putting up a picture of Justin Long. I don't want to do it. I don't want to put up the picture of Justin Long but I got oh yes. Yes. November's just shown us a signed picture of Robert Vaughn?

It's not framed, which it really should be. How dare you disrespect my uncle like that? You think that you have sort of like quiet days in your life. It turns out you never have a quiet enough day in your life that take your picture of Robert Vaughn to get signed is your sort of action. That sounds wonderful. My God, if Robert Vaughn ever came through Cardiff, I can't imagine what court he would possibly fucking have to do that. But I would immediately get him to sign something. Well, first, he'd have to burst out of a grade.

but I'm not sure why he'd come to Cardiff after that. Okay, well, I want him to stay away from Cardiff then. Last Voyage of the Demeter, but arriving in Cardiff instead of Crimson. Christmas Eve being visited by the ghosts of three ghosts and are all of Bovour. Last Vaughan of the Demeter. That's pretty good. That movie's not good, by the way.

Is it not? I haven't watched it. There are many, many hackers who are all submitting a piece of a big program to Maggie Q. They're not aware of each other, right? And then one of the hackers, after he's delivered it, his computer gets fucked up at glitches. So he presses Control, Alt, delete, and it's the computer that kills you instantly. Yeah. We get a shot from inside the fucking, like, computer tower of three C4 blocks, all of which are labeled on the external C4, explode and kill this guy. I wouldn't put that in my computer, just number one.

In Kistarmers Britain, that's going to be mandatory to have in your computer in case you ever, like, use the internet. know what's in my rig. I think even if I had a sort of lane type setup where everything in my room was computers, I would still be aware of whether or not there was blocks of C4 at any point in my setup. Doing a computer build stream and just putting in the C4. It doesn't work without it. I think I'd be okay because like the C4 in there, it's kind of like, I don't have like trays for it, so it's just kind of diagonal and the blasting caps are like pulling out. Your C4 is like loose. Fuck you

You put the C4 in a tray November We have had this conversation Oh get around to it It's on my list Immediately underneath Take my Robert Vaughn picture to get framed You're moving house again You're holding your computer

The C4 is jiggling loose inside as you walk I had to do that Yes I had to carry this computer case With a bunch of like loose hard drives It's one of those transparent cases too So they can all just see the C4 It's transparent. It's got a big window on the side.

Oh, sorry, Abby. I interrupt you like nine times just there. Sorry, yeah. No, so this guy, he presses control, and then he logs all the way off because his whole house blows up. He gets killed along with his roommate who has seen playing Gears of War,

the original one, which really takes me back. I'm TV trivia. I get hit three times in quick succession, like Penchak Salat by bits in this credit sequence because first hit, Gears of War. Second hit, this is based on the article, a farewell to I saw that, yeah.

I fucking read the article yesterday, and I tried to reopen it in advance of this, but I've been told that I've read my last free article on Wired, so I... Oh, shit. Yeah, based on a Wired article. And then the third one is that Gwen turns to me and doubles down on this statement that she made,

because she then says, I've seen this twice, maybe three times. I would say if you're going to watch three die-hard movies, I wouldn't go for die-hard four. three times. That wouldn't be... It's an unusual joke. I've seen the die hard trilogy.

Die Hard 4, Die Hard 4 and Die Hard 4, yeah. Question of all under different names. Yeah, it's Die Hard 4.0. I've seen Live Free and Die Hard. Live free or die hard. To be fair to her, I think this must have, like, run on the same TV channel that me and Gwen got as kids or something, because, like, I've also seen this one more than any other. They must have run it on British TV somewhere where Gwen and I were.

I'd never seen this before. This is another way that. Me and Gwen both really watched, like, Tenchi Muyo a lot on Tune. So there must have been some kind of like strange, we were in some kind of zone that was happening. Anyway, so at this point Maggie Q uses the algorithm. She puts all the pieces of the algorithm together and she hacks the FBI cybercrime building

and we get an all-time their fucking our pussies seem. It's so good immediately. The head of the FBI is just like, we've been hacked. It was a D-D-O-S computers hacking in the cyber. It wasn't quite D-D-O-S level, but they kicked our door, they fucked our pussies a little bit at least. They just the tipped up English point dexter

They're fucking our pussies right So somebody's doing computer shit Mm-hmm Something I'm so fucking happy That neither of you brought this factoid up Because I cannot wait to tell you this During the explosion Outside that guy's house

There is a single frame Of the director Len Weisman's Then wife Kate Beckinsale Just in the movie One single frame of Cape Beck and sale Here she is Why is that Claim beat Beckinsale

It flashes, because he was married to her at the time. And he put one single frame of my wife into the movie. Do you remember a ramble when they put like the sound of a donkey in? Absolutely. Just sliding Kate Beckinsale across the table. Just putting a wife in. Is this so she can technically get a credit or something? The color grading in Die Hard for is weird.

It's because there's a 15% opacity Kate Beckinsale layered over every frame. I watched it a couple of times and it burned Kate Beckinsale into my TV. weird that's so weird 55 inch oled tv with kate beck and sale in die hard for burned in it's like how don't you do that that was one

frame you had to leave it paused on well done well done just more movie you should have one single frame of Kate Beck and Sale insert meanwhile in a car a young couple are making out like in zodiac absolutely and like in zodiac they are interrupted

because as the guy tries to get kind of handsy. And the girl is telling him like, hey, no, I don't do that because I'm going to be the like sort of protagonist of the movie's daughter in a minute and I can't be like kind of sexually active. John McLean wraps on the window. Bruce Willis. It's like, hello. I'm Bruce Willis. Bold. Bold. Looks like Michael Chickles in the shield now. Don't like it. It's fucked up. It drags the guy out of the car and she at this point gets out of the car and I realize, holy shit, that's Mary Elizabeth Winstead. It is, yeah. Ramona flowers

from Scotland Hello John McLean is is woke in that he tells the guy that no means no which will not which will in no way

make up for the rest of this film's attitude towards women no no no he looks like he's on a lot of steroids he looks like a cop bracket's extremely negative like for real now

he does look like a cop yeah it's really uncomfortable but it's not I don't think they're meant to make him look that way yeah yeah But so they're estranged him and his daughter

and she's like, Dad, I didn't interrupt me and then she sends them both away. She's also changed her last name, which is the same thing his wife did in the first one. Yeah, to Gennaro. There's a thing, the other movies, all three of them, try their best to make John McLean relatable early

as like, this is a guy who does not have his shit together, right? Like, he's afraid of flying or, like, he's got the cop apartment full of, like, old Chinese takeout boxes or he's trying to get home for the holidays shit like that, right? This movie does not make John McLean relatable early. It makes him this kind of like

terrifying, hard-ass, protective dad early. Like he intimidates the like boyfriend off. And it's like, I guess that's relatable to an aging fan base of these movies, but it kind of just makes him seem like a dick. Right. Yeah. The aging fan base is, I think, the key. point here because like you can really chart the importance of this guy's wife over the course

of a diehard movies it's all about wife in episode one because the because you're watching a movie you're identifying with him you're like i love my wife i'm a young man and then by this point you've got then you have the action movie where they've got a daughter and i got to go rescue my daughter or whatever and by this point i've got an adult daughter she hates me obviously my wife's divorced from me i'm the audience for this movie yeah great i mean it kind of it prefigures a lot of uh i mean this came about the same year as taken, right? So clearly there was a kind of feeling in the sort of like action movie kind of workshops as it were that like what people really want is like daughter perils and like

vengeful dad. We want a vengeful dad movie. How old is Mary Elizabeth Winston supposed to be in this movie? Because it's not clear. She's meant to be a college student because they're at her college. Also the other thing about this is that John McClure is not funny. And John McClain used to be funny.

He used to be. And it gets to the point where the script is like dog ass in the first place. But it gets to the point where you're sort of writing a funnier one in your own head. Like he scares the boyfriend off. He gets back in his police car. And they call on the radio and they're like, hey, what are you doing Rutgers? And I go, I don't know, didn't study hard enough. He doesn't do that.

He doesn't do that. Perfect joke beat. He's like, yeah, I do cop stuff. It's completely nothing. They should have hired us to punch up the script in 2007 when I was, how old was I? I don't know, but I would have been prepared at a time to punch the script up. How old were you seven, I think? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you.

So the FBI, now that they know that hackers are lightly fucking their pussy, are like, we got to round up all the hackers in America because those are the only people it can be. So this now falls to John McLean, who is getting the call. It's like, the FBI need you because you're a senior detective to go and, like, pick up this one guy and, like, drive him to DC where the feds will interrogate him. So we then cut to Justin Long's hacker room. And again, I'm saying, have you seen The Matrix? Because it's just he's listening to the same type of music. Also, it's so fucking weird because, like, this hacker character who's, like, drinking energy drinks and, like, saying late up into the night on voice chat, there's no way in hell that this character in 2025 isn't a femboy.

So it's amazing to see this character played by a cis-haired white guy. It's like seeing a movie about a fucking C-L-A-Camp. Yeah, it's strange. It's also his, this character's name is Farrell. And his handle is Farrell, like F-4R-3-L-L, which at the time they didn't know would be a joke about a big hat, but now can be. And he's talking to a guy called Warlock, who is also just replaced with letters. It's W-A-R-10-C-K or something.

This is how hackers work God, imagine if somebody had a screen name where there's just two of them were numbers, it's crazy. I want to highlight also, the song specifically that he's listening to, we get a blast of the music video, and it's I'm So Sick by Flyleaf, which...

Yeah, and Gwen goes, I love that song. As did the beautiful wife I was watching this with. It was like, oh my God, is that fucking Flyle? Wives love Flyleif, it seems. Okay, I'm writing this down. Yeah, it seems... I attracted a wife. It's so crazy.

It's crazy, but that's on the soundtrack to Die Hard 4.0. The only other song on a soundtrack with Die Hard 4.0 is Fortunate Son, that they play eight times. It's true. Much like Battlefield, Vietnam. But so we see that Justin Long also has two bricks of C4 inside this PC case. Like what's going on here?

Did they ship these guys, the computers? Just install this special RAM in your... It says C4 on the fucking outside. This is where... Mossad got the idea and they thought maybe we can streamline this a little bit you know but so as he's about to

hit the delete key and exploit himself John McLean rings the doorbell and it's like hi it's me John McLean from the diehard movies so outside the goons who were in the sinister van they're like oh he didn't hit delete we'll go to plan B and they lock and load

they're French there's a set of goons yeah I appreciate a Eurogoon that goes back a bit, you know? It's 2007. They've mad at France because of fucking Iraq. Freedom fries. Yeah, they are.

Yeah, yeah. And they had a German bad guy in the first one. They're like... Oh, the French are one of the evil nations, like China and Russia. Yeah. They're like, the Taken guys were like Eurogoons. I'm pretty sure. I love a Eurogoon I really do.

The guys in like hostel, shit like that. The 2000s were a fantastic time. Hans Gruber, Die Hard One, was a Eurogoon, wasn't he? Time is a flat surface. circle, you know? But so these European perverts, weirdly there are a lot sort of more sourceless than the Eurogoons and Diehard 3, in my opinion. But they do lock in. They're not fucking.

And so John McLean, he like intimidates his way in because he's intimidating now and he's not funny and he's not the underdog at any point in this movie really, which for all the reasons why you liked him. It's what he's meant to be. He's just this guy, this wide man, this guy shaped like a vending machine, knocks the door. It's like EastEnders looking motherfucker, this Ross Kempass bitch. But so he looks, yeah. He's like, yeah, you're right. In the first few, he was an underdog, and that's why he was fun. And this is why this movie doesn't feel like a Die Hard movie.

It feels like a script for something else that got turned into Die Hard. It's interesting because Die Hard 3 was sort of at the point in American culture, the last point at which it was sort of plausible to be like, oh, the cops have it so difficult, you know? After that, total cop rule made it sort of impossible to do that. And so now he's now he's more of an operator You know

Yeah He also he does He breaks Justin Long's Gondoms He like fiddles with his gunnums He's like playing with dolls Yeah Police brutality What the fuck

You know like gondoms Yeah And he's looking around He's doing all of this boomer Like what the fuck is this gay shit For women you've gotten here Yeah it's really He's just walking around

This guy's dark room Go on I have a fucking theory about this right This is Abby's Lockin This is Abby's theory Of why computers are gay Okay

So a computer is a machine that performs a task. It does labor for a man. And in that regard, a computer is quite similar to a woman in the patriarchal construct, right? It's like it's a man's help meet. It exists for man. However, there is a big difference, which is that you cannot fuck the computer. You also cannot bully the computer into doing what you want through force of will. The computer only appreciates technical mastery. You have to learn how to use it and it only responds to your skill. So if the computer is not your equal and you cannot fuck it, it's not a woman, the computer must therefore be gay. That's true. That is, that is well sure. Since 2007, there has been a

concerted effort to make the computer into something that you can both strong arm and fuck. Yes, yes. I go from this is why they were right there. Bam. Yeah, yeah, because ever since the British government forced famed Alan Turing to death, I want to be able to browbeat the logic machine. Yeah, ever since they forced famed Alan Turing to death, there's been a quest to like, make computers into computers you can fuck yeah and I mean this is of a time

when using the computer sort of feminized you right like oh yeah because the big action hero is still bruce turns out that's true well yes again we didn't know quite the way

in which it feminized you no no we didn't understand that at the time so at this point you know how I talked about in the raid I have my favorite sniper team in the world the ones who like have a little kiss before they try and like perfectly dome you off

sink their breathing up in like two breaths it was unbelievable. Yeah, this is my least favorite sniper. This is, in fact, I describe him in my notes as the world's least sniper, because he has a rifle with a bipod and a scope on it, and then he just hits the, like, full auto switch, and just sprays the entire room with bullets. No, it's not sniping.

It's like, back in the day, 24-7 instant respawned two-fort, like this would have been unacceptable, you know? It offends my sense of sniper ethics. If he really wants to get my respect, you should take that sniper rifle and just run at them with it. You know, whitch, awesome. Mele.

Yeah, specialize in melee fight. He should be doing 360s. Meanwhile, the other Euro goons are sort of like coming up the stairs. McLean and the hacker sort of like dive for cover. At no point does John McLean call for backup because that's gay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, he just becomes grimly determined and just start shooting, yeah. He just locks in, yeah. off Bond one liners, too. He shoots a fire extinguisher and blows one of them out the window, which admittedly is sick. And he's like, ooh, that's going to wake the neighbors. The splitting diehard logo.

Yeah, because the gunfire wouldn't have done that. Also, that's a real case of, like, writing the problems with your script into your script as you realize them. Like, hey, why are there no neighbors in this? I guess, uh, also the fact that he uses a fire extinguisher as a kind of like explosive a red barrel. This is a gamer movie in all sorts of ways, and this is the first clue. So the goons come in. They spray the entire room. Weird that I like it from these guys. It's pretty good, like, kind of suppression. It's a good gunfight. I think if it's got to this stage,

go ahead and spray the room. But if you have a sniper, you should be doing it. I would like to institute an award here. Not like a full medal, maybe like a certificate or something, because this feels like a notable and a rare enough event to need to observe, which is the award for using a fire escape to escape a fire, because that never happens. Never seen anyone do that in a movie. No, it's just never done. They blow up the apartment, and it catches fire. And McLean's like, oh, we just used the New York style fire escape, which we have.

One of his Gundams falls on the delete key and blows up the bomb. Yeah, yeah. McLean locks into chest high cover again, because this. This is a gamer movie. The sniper guy, though, he's, all snipers can be characterized as one or two things. Most, almost all I would say, are menus. This guy, on the other hand, is parkour. This is parkour.

So he's like, he goes Matt Hancock mode. Yeah. He does those kinds of flips. Yeah. Casino Royale was the previous year. I've just looked up. Yeah. Yeah.

He parkers down the building onto the moving car, which is sick. John has the fucking, or is the circus in town line? At this point, like, we do get some very funny moments because one of the henchmen is hanging out of the car windows they're driving along, and the other guy, Parker's onto the bonnet, and it's kind of like the henchmen are competing to see who's going to get the Cronsteen. Yeah, never.

Which I quite like, if you attack the driver of a vehicle, you are in, automatic. Automatic, does it apply to the driver of a vehicle you're on? Yeah. Well, so we will find out later on, because there's multiple people competing for the Cronstead. in this movie, but they get away. Yes.

And at this point, the goons get the call from Maggie Q, who's like, oh, shit, I've got to pass this up the chain of command to the villain of the movie, Timothy Oliphant. Who I didn't recognize with hair, insanely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's just like, hello, I'm Timothy Oliphon, I'm the villain of the movie. He's playing this quite autistic coded as well. Like, he's making a lot of, like, too hard eye contact

and lots of, like, weird kind of head motions in a way that I sort of don't love. Like an evil Sheldon Yeah Like Sheldon And he's working He's got them working out of like a secret base Which has got like a truck

Like a tractor trailer And with like a computer's in the back Yeah It's kind of cool They must have insane like Huawei 5G shit Going on to get that much internet signal now But okay So so

So Bruce Willis and Justin Long They drive to DC This is where we get the It's fucking 4th of July weekend They're playing Credence Clearwater Revival on the radio. Yeah, fortunate son. They're playing fortunate son. There's a bunch of American flags, and there's a black helicopter that's got a bunch of French guys in it over D.C.

And I'm going like, is he trying to do, is he saying something? Len, are you trying to talk to me right now? The French mercenary attack on D.C. was a lot like Vietnam. It's kind of, I feel like, I don't know if he's trying to say so. I think there might be something sparking in his mind as he puts these images together. God knows. Yeah, so by the way, as they. as they leave New Jersey

McLean calls in the shooting because the script remembers that he should probably do that but he doesn't do anything he just like goes hey I killed like two French guys and blew up an apartment bye does not interfere with them like then they drive to

they're driving through I think I'm fucking out they're driving through I think like Philadelphia on the way to DC and you get the CCR on the radio and you get this conversation that's meant to be like you know how it is in our country today in 2008, which I can loosely

describe as Boomer versus Rock Against Bush Volume 1 guy. Yeah. Because McLean, McLean is, I don't know if he was ever plausibly a Credence Clearwater revival guy in the old movies, but he is now.

Now that he's sort of that bald and he's like, this is real music, you know, like classic rock. And, you know, the kid is like, the media's controlled for like the profit motive which is a kind of radical notion

for me to suggest in 2008 and McLean's like McLean like basically calls me a hippie and tells him to shut up yeah yeah Justin Long's like oh you listen to the news it's all fucking corporate propaganda and it's like this was deemed to be

a kind of like out there opinion and way back when this movie was made and now it's just like uncontroversible act clearly true yeah it's like shut up need if you don't think that yeah saying crazy shit he's like what are you listen to

and he's like transsexual podcasts obviously six seven skibbitty toilet yeah get with a fucking times old man just like audio of porn in one ear and the Bible in Chinese in the other so Timothy Oliphant is like all right time to commence operation

fucking the United States as pussy phase two evil doge attacks yeah which is it takes the immediate form of turning the big do the Italian job dial that's in every traffic control center in America all the way up to too much because of fucking computers

because everything's on computer now get it on the computer and now some guy Timothy Oliphon and Maggie Q can turn all the traffic lights green and make every car crash into each other yeah yeah there's traffic jams everywhere it's Gildick in every direction

it's Gildick however you can't they've gotten to the point where they know how to make people on the computer which is unfortunate because they do about a lot in these big crowd scenes yeah pretty good

oh really are they like PS1 characters walking around in the background like she doesn't help like the kind of you can see on like an architectural render or something like that like FIFA

crowd fief crowd in the background they get out of the car John calls him hack boy which is such a fucking it's like they've got no idea

they've got no idea what to say come on hack boys like actually that rules. That's sick, actually. Yeah, it's like, we're going to try walk it. We're like touch grass, right? I know you're not familiar with it. We're going to try jogging. And so as the entire population of Philadelphia exchange insurance details, Timothy Oliphon is like, all right, phase 2.1, we got to fuck with the FBI

some more by setting off the anthrax alarm in all of the government buildings in the northeast. Now, this, this is very smart because it means that all of those government buildings are canonically evacuated, so we can film it now with nobody, and it's going to be fine. I do like specifically the guy who hears a tone of alarm and goes, that's the anthrax alarm, as if you have to sort of memorize different boards for specific like shit that's happening. I believe that that guy does. I like that guy. At this point, I'm flagging pretty badly, and I'm going, I need to see Kate Beck in sail again.

You should be flashing Kate Beckett's sail up. Yeah. You're not going to see Kate Beck and sail. What you're going to see is Operation Fuck the United States is purposely phase 2.2 crashed the stock market. Yeah, because that's computers too.

They change the computers display. They don't even fuck it's pussy, but they change the display so that the arrows are red and pointing down. But all the stockbrokers are like, oh shit, sell, sell, sell, and it causes a panic on Wall Street. Timothy Oliphon, not stonks.

Timothy Oliphon quotes Lenin at one point just to be like, oh, cool. He looks at the sort of traders on the floor He's like, useful idiots, as Lenin would say. It's like, all right, man. Okay. Amazing. Pretty sure he wouldn't have said it in English, dipshoot.

Yeah, it's interesting that this movie is like a massive stock crash, and they made it in, what, 2007 came out in 2008, and everybody watching this was like, ah, it's never going to happen, I'm pretty sure. Stock crash. That's ridiculous to imagine. The stock couldn't have a crash. Yeah. About talking about a 2008 stock crash movie in a podcast in 2025, fucking out.

2025, fucking hell. I am Biden mode. By 2026, the crashing is coming. Good luck, everyone. Invest in podcasts. Podcasts are never losing value. Five pounds a month.

That's true. Five pounds a month, unless we have to jack that way up, unless you have to sort of pay for it with like a... Five pounds a month. Costco hot dog. We're only getting more valuable.

And you know what else, listeners, and this is a moment of sincerity. This podcast will never fucking use generative AI, so you can take that to the back. Oh, Christ, no, yeah. Can you imagine?

It's not... Fuck that shit. Yeah. So in this one, the FBI director is like, shit, our pussy is like well and truly being fucked right now. He asks to speak to a number of people. One of the people he asks to speak to is the Secretary of Trans. Yes, he does.

I would also be one of my first calls. I would have had a drop for this, but I don't. The aforementioned disaster that occurred before. Yeah. They're working out of the truck from inside, man, to the rest of this, because they're like, well, we can't be in the office because the office is full of trans threats. Yeah. Because of computers.

Yeah. John brings in Justin Long. Yeah, and he shows him the big board of like all the guys who got exploded playing Gears of War. And Justin Long is like, I've never seen these guys before in my life, to which John McLean goes, why do you have so many points in lie? Yeah. It's like you've seen them before in your life, other than.

Yeah. And Justin Long correctly assesses what's going on, which is what he describes as a fire sale, right? Yes. Which is essentially you break everything. I would have called it something more elegant than that but it's a fire sale because everything must go Yeah it's a national cyber pussy fucking

The entire US's pussy is being fucked They're pulling the US's ponytail They're gripping the front of the US's neck With their other hand Yeah, same lady liberty is being Shut up, you love it The idea being that if you only fuck one cyber pussy Then the system can like readapt and rebuild itself afterwards

But if you fuck every pussy at once It's just it's absolutely over Everything's computer we're being sort of vulgar or misogynistic with this comparison. We're not. It's the one the movie makes. It's just where we are sort of like lightly dialing that up for satirical purposes. And I should say

by like 0.5%. It gets pretty much it gets weird and psychosexual. It really, really does. At this point the bad guys hack the emergency network to transmit a YouTube poop to every channel in America. This is actually really fun. I like this as my idea. This goes hard. This is great. I like this. Yeah. This is a good

bit. Yeah. They cut together a bunch of different American presidents to be like, it'll be like, Kennedy says the word, our, Nixon says the word, pussy's, and then Reagan says, are getting, and then Obama says, fucked, you know? Yeah, it's like, really, really fun, really good idea.

And then, like, when they finish that off, we cut to the inside of the van, and one of a guy goes, I tried to find more Nixon clips, which I read, yeah, quite fun. Yeah, the YouTube poof is lament. You are under attack, none, and, like, that's it.

There's not really any meaning. to it, they're just doing it to be funny, I guess. They're just freaking everyone out, basically, which is it's working. We see what it's working as well. Yeah, and we see, as they're like, where they're freaking everybody out, they're really distracting everybody and I go, it's Die Hard 3 again. You did this

one. This is Die Hard 3. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not as good because you don't have Jeremy Irons being a sinister German man. There's no riddles. There's no gay riddles. It's another robbery. Do you remember the gay riddles from Die Hard 3? They were good. I do. I miss those gay riddles. Instead, we're just getting YouTube poops now, which is, you know, society.

I think this is this kind of compelling. Very tall part is transmitting remixes of penis breaker. Weirdly, like, of a sort of serious, a similar time period, the last splinter cell game they ever made RIP to that franchise being good, did a similar plot beat and did it with a kind of effective creeping horror in places, right? Like, it was possible to do this. Shout out to Tom Clancy's daughter who listens to this podcast. Yeah.

Hell yeah. Your dad's intellectual property had some pretty good video games in it, I guess. But... Mix, mixed. We're going to talk about feds. We haven't mentioned our heads of the FBI Cybersecurity Division, who is, of course, Cliff Curtis, playing Bowman, who is spending his entire time walking around being sort of like just being in charge,

Right. It's not a ton of character to him. Although you say that, he is a good guy. Right. And if you think about the relationship that Diehard or Die Hard 3 had to the feds specifically, it gets a lot kind of stranger because in those movies, it's like the feds are interfering and conspiratorial and gungho and thoughtless and we'll fuck everything up. Whereas in this one, the feds are sort of trying their best and they're good people. But in order to preserve that, they have to invent a kind of Fed above the Fed.

The Fed fed feds? Yeah, I love the Fed fed feds in this movie. Who do all of the same dynamics, but to the FBI? Like, there's like an NSA guy and a Homeland Security guy who show up and they're like, hi, we're from the federal government. We're not going to tell you everything, anything, and we're going to sort of like fuck you over. So they store them in the back. We're going to hang around and then give you some information later on.

At this point, there's a scene where John and Justin Long are going out to car and John's like they could never fuck the United States is cyber pussy right you're kidding they could never fuck the United States and then Justin Long has this line where he says after Katrina it took five days for FEMA

to get water to the Super Bowl to the fucking super dome where the people were and then the point is like the US is not as strong as we think and it's like oh shit this movie is not about being transgender no and it's a movie that includes some real 2008 vintage leftism

in as much as that was a thing yeah 2007 yeah of hey uh you know george bush doesn't care about black people and the united states is extremely vulnerable to to sort of attack because of it's uh well hubris for one uh also you know i said about the the fed feds they actually referenced die hard one here just to kind of there's one of these long every 10 minutes just to keep you engaged to be like oh like die hard like your fucking heartbeat raises a little bit john you got to take just and long to next location, we'll give you an escort, and the guy escorting them is called Agent Johnson. Yeah.

And McLean is like, huh, like in Die Hard One. Oh, that's what that line was. I already forgot. That's the name of the... The guy in the helicopter with the sniper rifle, yeah. So they're driving to next location and... Justin Long is sort of like looking for his keys, except what he's looking for is a meal deal.

Every scene he's in, he's like, I have not eaten in like two days. can we stop for something I'm dying my blood sugar is fucked I've only eaten like Red Bull for the last few days was all I've eaten yeah yeah

I'm living on diet pure monster and fucking opening the fridge it's just diet coax and Red Bulls and a race is fast break also John John turns round in the scene

he tries to do his like intimidating shit again but he's taking into account driving time so he says you've got about 14 minutes to tell me

why you recognize those guys. And I'm like, that's not a very urgent threat. I can mess around for a bit before that. Yeah, I've got a solid like 10 minutes before I even need to start thinking about it. Just answer some emails, yeah. You get a direct line to Bruce Willis, by the way, where someone says, you're a man out of time to him.

They goes, you're a Timex watch in a digital age. I just want to put a pin on that. Because Timothy often, like, traces their location. Not yet. Oh, that is exactly. Sorry. First of all, Justin Long is like, okay, the other hackers, they were my competition

we all made a piece of the cyber pussy fucking algorithm for Maggie Q but I didn't do anything wrong and at this point Doug Timothy Oliphant and Doge are hacking their radios and Maggie Q is on the radio directing them like okay go down this street instead and Justin Long's like

yeah it's cool Justin Long's like I know her I recognize her sexy voice might not say all American women have sexy voices very funny to be like I recognize her from that time my sexually her Braster as well. Yeah. It's like, remember earlier when I said out loud, that's a nice voice you have just to make

sure that that was in the movie. It's like, this is a fun idea. The team takes over the car's navigation system and starts putting them towards. It's good. I like it a lot. When they rumble them, John gets some misogyny because they cut the bullshit, honey, just put your boss on and I'm like, okay, fuck you. The way he rumbles them would be kind of fun.

Yeah. If they delivered it. Better. Well, he's like, he's on the radio, she's pretending to be the police dispatcher, and he's like, hey, you must, crazy, must be wild with all the, like, 1287s running around. And she's like, oh, yeah, it's nuts. And he's like, yeah, it's the code for naked people, so I know you're bullshitting me. And that's when he hits her with a, like, you know, can I speak to a man who has, like, interiority, please, honey, please, yeah. Yeah.

Timothy Oliphon's like, hello, John McLean, I'm reading your file, your wife hates you. you post a really weird thing in the telegraph about how you're all friends who are comedians don't talk to you anymore is really weird as someone should do a mental health check anyway, if you shoot Justin along in the head right now I'll type a million dollars into your bank account

how about that? Yeah, because he wipes his 401K he takes all the numbers out of his bank account which is really funny. My numbers. Fuck, it's all computer. And when he won't do it, that's when he says you're a timex watch in a digital age

which is meant to be like, damn that's hardcore fuck you're a man out of time if John McLean average person does a time X watches they direct them into the middle

of nowhere and they attack them with a helicopter or the like same the parkour sniper is shooting out of a helicopter at them all the FBI guys get killed

if you remember how even in Diehard 3 right the chase scene you had a lot of like fun dialogue you had the like hey which way the Catholics like cross themselves

are north-south-west-east, right? This movie, this sequence, all of the dialogue is either get down or hold on. And that's all that, yeah. There's no source, there's no source. Like, they're not just plain, quipping when I want them to quip. They're not, like, there's no juice. It's unfortunate. Yeah. So the plane commandeers, commandeers the car.

Rare appearance from the FBI police livery here. leads them on a car chase and then knocks the guy out of the helicopter This is fun again like good ideas with a fire hydrant

He like runs over a fire hydrant and then like parks over it for a second until the helicopter's above and then rolls off so it like squirts him out of it It's like there are some good ideas here and they're not shot interestingly

I'll say that It's a movie kind of written around the stunts well but like Yeah Some of the car crashes are really good too Yeah And everyone is a flash

and shape back and sell I'm like, oh. So to escape the helicopter, which is still pursuing them, he drives into a tunnel. And Timothy Oloffin goes, hack the tunnel. Hack the tunnel now. Yeah, again, fun, stupid idea. He's going under this tunnel that's closed off,

and Justin and fucking Timothy O'Fant is like, open up both ends of the tunnel to full traffic and then shut all the lights off. Yeah. Yeah, just allow American drivers to do... Which is a great. bit so long as you don't remember that cars have headlights. Americans can't drive with their lights without the lights.

That's true. Yeah, that is fair. These are the real, like, suicidal, like, Arc de Triumph drivers from John Wick 4. I wrote that fucking doubt, yeah. As soon as they have the slightest opportunity, it's like, car crash, death, death, death, death, death. The second you sent you in a situation is, like, pedal to the fucking medal.

It's like, I'm getting out of here. I'm standing my ground. bring the car to an uncontrolled stop against the nearest opposite facing car yeah a lot of these civilians definitely fucking die there's like cars getting flipped and shit it's cool definitely getting flipped and everything flying through the air there's one where

you get this like fucking obvious for the trailer shot where like a car flies at our two protagonists and it lands on the bonnets of two other cars like nearly hitting them it's like fun ideas again but so McLean McLean like stashes Justin Long somewhere

he like puts him to the side he takes him out of his inventory He goes like sit here for a second I gotta do some trailer shit It's time It's time for us to part ways And Justin Long goes fine I'll be back at the camp

Uh And then he gets into the FBI car Drives it at the helicopter Which is at the end of the tunnel And then sort of dives out of the car At the last second allowing the car to ramp up a toll booth and into the helicopter,

destroying it, knocking the French parkour sniper out of the side where he's just fine. Yeah, he lands on the car. He's fine. Mr. Parkour, he's still here. Keep your eyes on him. He'll be back.

Mr. Parkour. This is, unfortunately, sick. The problem is, right, it's sick, but then the movie has to spend a couple of minutes after everything that does that's sick going, did you see that?

Yeah. Which is what Justin Long says to him after seeing him. Hey, you just blew up a helicopter with a car and I'm like, I know. John McCain's like I was out of bullets but a minute I hook

It's the first rule of screenwriting Show then tell It's a two screen experience You know You've got to people are on their phones and shit You've got to say it You've got to make sure to say it You've got to be like holy fuck

You're going to have to backspace About 20 seconds If you want to see something awesome They fly now They're playing snake on their 2007 phones They've flown since Anyway what the fuck happens now

it gets to a police station where nothing happens yeah there's so you get a little cut in here where some guys are setting up in a government facility and this is the point where you see them admitting that it's a movie and that everything not everything is computer because this room looks like a kind of combination howl brain and TARDIS

just like panels and things like that it's the national data administration and the dog move in for the next stage their plan by like infiltrating it disguised as hazmat anthrax guys. Yeah and that's just going on in the background. This movie has about 50 different shots where a guy takes off a disguise and then shoots the guy who noticed him

it with like a silence pistol. And this is one of those times. Yeah, it's cool. So a guy sets up to like, you know, presumably fuck the United States as pussy some mort. Like, yeah. You've got, you're obviously you're led to believe that's wherever the United States is pussy is like. Yeah, yeah. It's like a

strategic pussy reserve. Yeah. I actually wrote down because there's a montage of him, like, putting in, like, a DVD and stuff. And I wrote down, this guy is an incredible hacker because he managed to get a USBA in the right way the first time, which... Yeah. They teach you that in hacking school. The stunts in this movie are really something.

They just had to, like, show and putting it in upside down and just cut it, like, trim the clip down. That's movie magic. That's a silver screen. This is where we get the deep fake of Congress getting blown up. Yeah. Un-fucking believable to see a movie do the... Austin Powers, Dr. Evil. No, that was actually just a clip from Independence Day,

but it proves the point I'm making, unironically, as we get, they take over the airwaves yet again and put, like, a view of the capital on the TV. They're typing into the Kairan. Insane formatting, because it's like, what if you called 911 and no one answered, question mark ellipsis, which, you don't do that. That's bad formatting.

It's ellipsis question mark. Yeah, absolutely. It's fucked up. But then they throw up the capital. They play America the Beautiful. And they blow up the fucking Capitol. They hit the fucking Capitol. Yeah.

And we see Cliff Curtis go, oh, shit. The Capitol. That's where America is. And like run out to see if it's there, but it's still there. Yeah. And we get a shot of him and McLean both looking at the same capital because Americans, you know? Right. Cool, man.

They stopped the fucking capital. My favorite guy is a guy who's in a barbershop because John McLean is watching this thing on the news on the TV through a barbershop window or something or a cafe or something and there's a guy in there who goes like can you put the news back on and I love him because he hasn't been paying

any attention all day he's just there reading this book he's busy guy who's had fortunate son stuck in his head all day this is the bit where Justin Long is like feeling guilty he's like oh man I thought it'd be cool to like tear down the system man I thought it would be cool to rock against Bush

I thought it would be cool to be an American idiot I thought it was so cool to hands across America He genuinely looks directly at the camera for a second And the show where he's going like I thought it would have been cool To do the to do a fire sale And then Bruce Willis is like It's not a system, it's a country Full of people

It's a whole country full of people You're talking about people man You're the elite hacksaw number one pussy fucker Who's not dead yet right So if you were the pussy-fuckingist guy, where would you fuck pussies next? And Justin's like, well, look, think about a fire cellist, there's some pussies that you can't fuck over the internet, you've got to go to the... Some pussies are physical.

Like electric power, nuclear power, gas power. And he's like, so all the electricity on the eastern seaboard is controlled out of a physical building in West Virginia. Like, that's where they've got to go next. Like, logically, right? So they're like, fuck, okay, shit. We've got to go to West Virginia. I guess this is your statement of the movie, by the way, out of John McClain.

Because he's going like a country isn't just like a computer system you can fuck with, it's people, it's full of people. Yeah, it's two guys looking at the capital and knowing it means the same thing to them because they're both Americans, you know? Absolutely. Yeah.

Sure, that weren't aged badly. Let's do woke January 6th as soon as humanly possible. They have to steal a car for this. It's coming up, you know? John McLean was definitely a January 6th. John McLean was full fucking force. It's not a hundred percent. So they have to steal a car, but it's a smart car.

He didn't know where he was at the time. It's like, like, remote, like, it's got like a low jack on it or whatever the fuck. Yeah, it's, it's one of, it's like, cars are fucking computer now as well, by the way. You got to have a bit about how customer service is irritating. Immediately prior to this, we'd establish that they'd shut down all the phones as part of Operation Fuck America's pussy. But, oh, they didn't fuck down the Toyota service. service lion, buddy. That's going to stay around.

And so like a beggat woman on the phone to like start the car by confecting a story about how his dad's been shot. And there is a kind of funny bit here potentially that they also fuck up in the telling, which is she goes, what's your name? He's to rifle through the glove box. And the name is Dvorak Sharjensky, which is kind of a funny name to read the first time, I guess. Yeah, kind of funny be like, oh, you got to help me. My dad's injured. His name is Dvorak Jovjensky. is what I'm seeing here. But it's just delivered so flat.

Like, there's no humor. There's no irony in any of this, which is, that was one of the things that made diehard charming, you know? And the progression of an action movie series, any series, even actor, like, Stephen Seagall, right? Like, out for justice, right? He beats the shit out of a bunch of people with, like, a pool ball and a sock, right? But there's a kind of irony to it. There's a kind of knowingness to it. fast forward to like

Steven Seagall making a movie filmed entirely in Belarus for tax purposes where he never has to get out of a chair right he's seen it all moves somehow because he knows that's ridiculous he's dead serious about that and it's just this really sad thing that happens with every

action film almost where it gets like more self-serious as it ages and it happens to this in DieHod 3 Bruce Willis and Samuel Jackson had some good chemistry and I don't think this is a slight against either Bruce Willis or Justin Long,

both of whom are like good actors. They just don't have the same rapport. They just don't seem to be quick. It's a real cultural thing in that John McLean as a character, right, meant to be kind of relatable every man underdog, a bit of a man out of time in some ways, out of place. In Die Hard one, it was because he couldn't keep up with the fucking yuppies, right? Because he was just a working stiff.

And then the same rule of that. But like, we lose that kind of, we got a bit of, scared of that almost proletarian sensibility of like I'm just a working guy and we thought that's that people won't like that he has to be like more like he's to look more like a thumb with really bad vaso constriction you know and so he's just he's just scary in this

you know and it just sucks it's not nice they try and have a scene on the way to the eastern fucking power block in West Virginia where he's like saying to Justin Long is like I'm not a hero I'm a base I'm divorced. I've been playing around in chat GPT creating a game about lesbians

and you have to figure out which one's trans troll. Just picked up all the ingredients for a carbonara, including the pan and creator. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Justin Long looks directly down the camera and he's like, I think being divorced and bold is cool actually. Yeah. Yeah, sick.

His thesis statement here is, because Justin Long is like, how are you so calm about this? Why do you keep doing this? why are you that guy you know like the hero and he goes if there was somebody else to do it I would let them do it believe me

but there's not so we're doing it right which is a kind of like limit of plausibility I guess you hit when you do this to the same character four times yeah it's like I guess this just happens to me just lucky I guess

better line probably I don't know but so we see we see Maggie Q disguise herself as the FBI they take over over the, like, West Virginia power facility. At once again, somebody goes, hey, you're not the real FBI.

Get shot in the head with a silence pistol. Classic, when every hitman run goes this way. But so, they infiltrate the location. And, of course, they find the guards dead. Yeah. I thought the point of doing all of this shit remotely was that you could do.

this shit from like China or Alaska or a disputed island between Russia and Japan. But somehow, despite doing all the stuff they need to do in person, in person, Timothy Oliphant is still driving around in like a tractor trailer just in the US to set up the rest of the movie. That's a good point. I would have done this from outside the US, actually. That would have been a good thing to do. Anyway, so John and Justin Long reached the control room.

And at this point, we have one of the most upsetting scenes in the movie. We start off with some misogyny because John gets Maggie Q at gunpoint and he goes, playtime's over sweetheart, okay, massage. Yes. Straight away, right? And so he gets in a fight scene with Maggie Q and she does some like high kicks and stuff. And again, this is where the movie is just like, so upset about the Matrix because John gets his ass kicked and then he goes, that's enough of this kung fu shit, I've known some

bitches in my day and then like just like punches her and I'm, he beats her unconscious, like And to the point where even Justin Long is in the scene reacting like, holy shit, did you just punched a woman unconscious? He's like half your size. And John's like, yeah, fucking keep unfucking the pussy on the computer, right? There's something that happens when sort of writing fight scenes where it's like male characters and female characters, where to avoid this queasy feeling of watching a man beat a woman unconscious, you either have like two women fighting or like some intervening circumstance,

which is sometimes it kind of annoys me sometimes that as a creative constraint leads to actually better fight scenes like the night comes for us as a great film which involves like two women kicking the absolute shit out of each other because they're too scared to film a man doing it sometimes it bothers me but in a kind of like

well we can't have a woman fight as hard as a man but in this case it is just nakedly misogynistic that they don't do that because it not only does it not occur to them to do that, but it's not like, oh, we're going to set these two characters on an equal footing as like they're both fighters. It's like, no, no, this is, this is a woman who fights like kung fu style, which is foreign and gay and suspicious and deceptive. And of course she's wearing high heels and skin tight leggings. Yeah, whereas John McLean, you know, American hero, just straight boxer, um, just punches a woman in the face full force a lot of times.

And this following immediately after the, uh, I got divorced and it kind of left a hole in my life conversation makes it pretty clear that this movie is kind of working out some aggression towards women yeah towards like think the only named woman in the movie yeah well no sorry married us with wins said as well um but it's not often that we get a scene that it hits all four points of the scum spectrum it's really but i was watching this thinking this is this is like it's quite disturbing unusually like ranted time in american popular culture so john gets gets kicked out of a window because she like recovers because she's tough, kicks him out

of a window and he has to fight his way back up. Yeah. Justin Long tries to punch her and she just like twists his arm. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of fun. Yeah. Fully on her side at this point. John gets in a car.

Yes. Burst through the wall in an SUV. Fucking God. This is genuinely like, if I had to describe the kind of subtext of a lot of American film or American culture, it is this scene which is sort of use car aggressively on bitch, right?

Like it is, it is car versus woman. And like from someone who very clearly prefers car. And I just, I don't know, maybe I'm reaching here, but you can see downstream in American culture a few years later. What if you just ran over the women who are your enemies, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought that too. it's really disturbing this scene.

So he rams her into an elevator shaft and the car is left dangling in the elevator shaft. She's still alive. She's tougher than John McLean has been in any of the previous three movies. Talk about fucking die-out. She starts climbing the truck to keep fighting him and I'm like, this is Cronstein-Rosette material.

But the problem is what they've kind of done here is if you'd given her more background and more lines, she would have been the John McLean of this movie, right? Like, but instead it's just like, we have to keep raising stakes for our antagonists. John tells her to smile pretty and then punches her unconscious a second time. He chokes her a bit with a seatbelt and says that's not too tight, is it? This is weird and sexual and sadistic. It's really fucked.

I don't like to seat at all. It's really fucking uncomfortable. There's another goon who starts shooting down the elevator shaft of them. Justin Long hits him with a pipe his gun falls into the car Maggie Q wakes up still not dead Crohnstein Rosette grabs the gun

At a third point she just wants this more Yeah she does yeah Her and Mr. Parkour fucking vying for it But she shoots up at John who like jumps onto the elevator cables just in time

and then they fall down the elevator shaft And the car hits Maggie Q and blows up And I'm like RIP Fucking great I wanted him to win that fight She was great You can kind of turn the facet

of this and go like, it would be nice to have a female character who died hard, as it were, who like fought the whole time was like insanely tough. And you know how like, you know how action movies reset for the next generation after taken with John Wick, right? Which we'll talk about in due course. Oh, we'll get that. Let me do kill John Wick. John Wick likes to turn the dial woker on this one where it'll be like, we got like one

sort of woman brackets duplicitous but like who John kind of weirdly respects or is merciful towards this is not that this is much more rancid than that because then having killed her John rescues Justin Long and then calls up Timothy Oliphant and it's like I'm going to do a bunch of

misogyny to you and racism they keep doing this too so like they Justin Long counter hacks him and sends them a bunch of pop-ups to like slow down their pussy fucking operation. One of the pop-ups is for barely legal Asian girls and Justin Long says like, now that your girlfriend's dead, you can look at this and it's like,

she just died and you're sexualizing her. And also, I mean, like point of order for the script writer, Justin Long didn't know that Timothy Oliphon and Maggie Q were a couple. They kissed him honestly earlier on, but he wasn't there for that. So how did you know that? So John tries to provoke Timothy Oliphant so that they can trace his location or something. shit like that to keep him on the phone longer, which is, well, that's the ostensible justification

for these lines where he's like, he does this twice, he does it once now and then is it much worse later on. He's like taunting him. Uh, he asks, uh, he asks him about the little Asian chick who likes to kick people. Yeah. Last time I saw her she was at the bottom of an elevator shaft with an SUV rammed up her ass. So like the violence against her is sexualized. Nakedly sexually violent. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. This will get worse later on, listeners, if you can believe it, right? And so Tim of the Oliphant is on his webcam being like, that's a kind of fucked up thing for you to say.

And they get a screenshot of that and send it to the FBI, who are then like, oh shit, that's Thomas Gabriel. I know this guy, this is the Ollifant. He's an ex-fed, he's an ex-fed because he had to be an ex-fed, because no one else, no foreigner could be good at computers. Like, yes. And you need to know the systems from the inside as well. It makes so much more sense to be like, he built this.

That's why he knows how it's pussyfuckabool. He's the pussy fuckingist guy around, almost as pussy fuckingist is November Kelly. He made this pussy. Interesting point, by the way. He made this pussy. Whoa. He fucking made this pussy. He sculpted it.

This director, by the way, he did all the other underworld films. And he also did ballerina, which is the John Wick. Okay. I haven't seen that. I haven't either. Interesting, it doesn't interest me at all, despite the fact that on paper, what if they did John Wick with Anna Darmus is something but I think I might have asked for on stage for this podcast before.

It's the Ocean's Eighth thing, again, of being like, oh, you wanted this with women? Well, how about you have your separate sort of lower budget, less marketing and worse people involved in making it, woman version of the movie? Anyway, so... I have nothing to say about the ballerina franchise. I hope it goes on to employ many people. I hope they make a movie a year

and they're all absolutely serviceable. I will watch them, fuck it. Sure. So, yeah, we find out that he made... I have to make it Underworlds as well. The two feds, because again, I'm interested in this thing of being like, we have to have feds above the feds,

because the kind of centralization and the escalation of these things has made it so that, like, post-9-11, you got to sympathize with the federal government. Those are the good guys, right? but so what if all the stuff we wanted to say that was negative about the federal government was like a separate, more secretive,

worse bit of the federal government. The deep state. The deep state. And so the two deep state guys are like, yeah. So there's this one, like, facility in Maryland, the one we saw them hacking into earlier. Oh, this is way later. Is it?

This is way later. Yeah, way later. Okay. First of all, Timothy Oliphon and Doge hit the big hack and blow up the building button and they blow up the building. Yeah, this is a fucking cinema sins ding 120 decibels. Why do you have to hack that building in person

if you can destroy it remotely and destroying it does the same thing which is turn off all of the power and trap John McLean's daughter in an elevator? I don't know, but they do. Oh, yeah, welcome back to John McLean's daughter. You weren't getting away from this movie, pal. You got married with Winston for this.

Stuck in the lift. But McLean and Justin Lowe. and get thrown clear, and they're like, shit. Well, the only option is we've got to go to Baltimore. We got to see Warlock. We got to go see Warlock. Which means they have to fly there because there's a helicopter. Yeah, they're still Maggie Q's helicopter.

If you have any sort of hesitation about John McLean as a character flying a helicopter, what you get instead is a callback where he's like, I used to be terrified of flying. Just like, yeah, you used to be a normal guy. You used to be a guy who happened to be a cop, but it wasn't even that relevant that he was a cop. Yeah. the whole time through it he's basically been like don't worry I've done three other diehards this is probably going to be no problem for me

diehard one he wasn't climbing for a fucking elevator shaft because he was a cop they don't train cops to do that he was doing that because he was a guy like it just... He was a real cop he just stood by and done nothing and that always people would be killed yeah they fly to Baltimore to see Warlock instead of a funny joke where

Warlock is a sexy trans girl and Justin Long is surprised which would have It's been way fucking funnier. It's just, it's Kevin Smith. It's motherfucking Kevin Smith, baby. It's silent Bob. It's still po- your cyber pussy still pones my taint browner. He's Dick one radio and balls and so on, yeah.

Amazing. Yeah. Kevin Smith, if he's in no more scenes, that's a Cronstein guarantee. A fucking the other one. Calfman guaranteed. Kaufman, he is in more scenes, unfortunately. He is, unfortunately, in one more scene later on. So, eh.

We know two things about him. One, he's got a CB radio set to an emergency frequency. Cool. And two, he has, despite being a hacker, a webcam plugged in with no tape over it. Yeah. Yeah. Also, Bruce Willis doesn't know what Star Wars is. And they're like, oh, you don't know what Star Wars is?

And it's like, whatever, man. The Acolyte hasn't even come out yet. Star Wars is still warm enough. Yeah, who cares? Adam Warlock fucking Google's next stage of plot. Yeah. And this sets off a Google alert in Timothy Oliphant's trailer. He calls them up, remotely activates the webcam.

It's like, hey, stop trying to fuck my pussy when I'm trying to fuck the United States' pussy. And this is when John gets his second run at be racist to this guy to keep him on the phone. Yeah. Crazy to do it once. Insane to do it twice. It's a weird edit. Like, genuinely, you sort of wonder whether they meant to cut one of these scenes. So, firstly, he does a bit where he reasons his way to the existence of Hensch, because he's,

like, I've killed so many Eurogoons. You've got to be running out of Eurogoons. Where do you get them? 1-800 hench? It's like, it's an app now, John. Keep up. It's an app. However, instead of spalling that bit out

over the course of a podcast episode, he immediately detours into anti-Asian misogyny. Yeah, he says, I bet you're still on hold with, can I get another dead Asian hooker bitch over here right away? It's really, like, nasty. It's like skinny little ninja chick.

She was smoking hot. I'm like, you disgust me. You cut this woman with a car. Yeah, this is awful. So Timothy Oliver's like, how about fucking this, big man? Yeah. Your daughter's stuck in a lift. I'm going to fucking get her and I'm going to kill her.

He shows Bruce are like, I got to stop calling him Bruce. He shows John McLean like a feed of his daughter in the elevator. And it takes like four or five attempts before John comprehends that she can't hear him. Just keeps yelling like, hang up the phone, Lucy. Because she hear me? Lucy. It's like, come on, man, come on. So she in the elevator, she does say that she wants them to call, because he pretends for the elevator help guy.

Yeah, I'm Mr. Elevator. Yeah. She's like, call my dad. Call my dad. He's an NYPD cop, which is fine. That's sweet. Whatever. She gets rescued by the FBI.

Again, it's more sort of disguised bullshit. Yeah. pinched man this yeah and then we get a lot more like woman harmed as well because they like take her to the lair and she like

hits one of them so like two of them hit her and one of them says this bitch is a handful which is so fucking gross treat women normal maybe yeah just be normal so John McLean and Justin Long

are just like we've got to go to the National Pussy Association building where they're fucking the pussy. My God, that's the only place they could be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where America's pussy is, we've got to go there. They liquidate the hackers. I want to take one second to note,

one of the hackers in the fucking van is Charlie's pedophile uncle from Always Sonny. He looks exactly the fucking same. He's wearing the same outfit. He's got the same facial hair. It's Andrew Friedman. And every single time he was on screen, it was like a jump skater.

But then fortunately, at this point, They've gotten to the stage in the plan where you're done with these guys so you kill them all naturally. So they pull the head hacker out and just ace everyone else. This is also where the Fed fed feds have to tell Bowman from the FBI like, what is the national

pussy building? What is it? And they're like, so as soon as the stock market shit happened in like scene 34 or whatever, all of the economy was downloaded to a computer. There's like a backup of the economy. You know how dollars is numbers? Well, we put all of those numbers and therefore all of those dollars on

a big external hard drive that is currently plugged into a USB in this one location and this guy's going to fucking steal it because it was his idea to put it there There's a backup of the whole economy on the computer and then Timothy Oliphon's going to download

the economy and then he could just like he's got the whole economy at that point he could take all of it like all the money and he could just take it all of it And so that also means that this movie fits in with heist season, which is pretty cool. Yeah, absolutely. It's a die-hard.

Also, this is the pussy that he made. He built it. And then the Fed feds never told the feds about it. How did he know that the second we set off those alarms yesterday, all the pussies in America would start downloading to this remote server? It's like he built the National Pussy backup servers. He built it, yeah. Like, he knows about this. They infiltrate the National Pussy location.

Yeah. John sort of like beats a guy unconscious and takes his radio, like, and die hard. Oh my god So okay I want to fucking I want to fucking talk about this fucking scene John fights this

goon and like kicks him down some stairs John takes his radio and he calls Timothy Olyphan and he's like you're what up

I'm John McLean I'm diehard from die hard I'm gonna come and get you and then he fires the gun to like execute this this guy

over the radio just like murder might not say murder at all caps and even Timothy Oloffin and Lucy McLean are shocked

that this has happened, right? And then, then when he's like, I'm going to come and get you Timothy all often. We cut back to John in the stairwell. And then we get some like footage of John moving this guy around and he's alive. So he faked it. And we get some blatant fucking ADR where John's mouth is off screen. And he says, don't move.

I'll send a doctor. And then as he walks away, this guy's clearly just like not moving. It's like the script quite clearly had John McLeodeman. But then they had to change it in post. was because they can't just have him commit fucking cold-blooded murder. It's like, yeah, all the test audiences reacted exactly like everyone in the room. We're like, oh, my God, did John McLean just kill this?

Just kill that man, like, we got out of them. You want to put some pressure on that next scene. So Justin Long gets separated and gets... Yeah, Justin Long gets separated by the, but he just enters a state of falling. Like, he just becomes, he starts falling. I'm not even clear what happens. He just becomes tagged with falling. and just starts going.

He clips through the walls or something. I don't know. Clips through the walls, ends up in the, it ends up next to the big USB drive. Yeah. But he sets a password note. He also says in like a very reverent voice, oh Jesus, they're going after the money, which I really liked as a guy who an hour ago was like, I used to think it was cool to smash the sister, you know.

He doesn't go, hang on a minute, I could have all the money. That's the money. They're going for the money. They're going to occupy Wall Street. So. Well, that's a man. America. That money's America. It's a really funny bit here because it just flashes up that he's sort of set a password on it, but part of the part of the sort of tech bullshit for this, it says that it's a 1024 bit encryption, which 100% took Gwen out. And I had to ask why. And the answer is that the password to unlock this, just as a number, would itself take up more data than exists in the universe.

So, hell yeah. That's a sort of Extremely encrypted. Yeah, maximally. It's a little zip on. Yeah. John, he's talking on the phone. He's like, he's on the phone.

He's on the phone with the guy. And he's like, I heard you used to be a Fed, but they kicked you out for like being too autistic. Why are you doing this now? And the guy has some ideology because he says, better me than some, and he really puts the source on this word, outsider. Hmm.

Some religiousness. nut job, which again is tying into the myth that 9-11 was about religion and not about like American foreign policy or less like America's sport of Israel, right? We couldn't have some sort of Al-A-A-A-A-A-C-A-Sider

kind of getting in and fuck with some Al-Ca-Seltz is going to get in here and fuck out of money. But John's like, this is just the plot of golden-eye. You're doing a golden-eye, but you're just going to steal all the money and he's like, yeah, well, you know, what do you? He goes like, what, I shouldn't get paid for my work here?

Timothy Oliphon at this point slaps Lucy McLean and why not to say, oh, so this violence against women is bad. She's getting slapped more times in succession than like me in the hookup. It's crazy. He hands her the phone to be like, you talk some fucking senses of this guy, he's not listening to me, and she immediately tells him exactly how many henchmen there are left. That's pretty cool. I like that.

She's getting more John McLean. That's what the slap is for. as, like, sort of time goes on, which I think we're meant to be at Zay. You'd think the next movie would use this, but no. It'll be, yeah, Mary Elizabeth Winstead is the ballroom. They send in the parkour mini-boss. Yes, Mr. Parkour.

Hell yeah, Mr. Parkour is back. He's determined to win the Kronstein. Monsieur Parcourt to you. Monsieur Parcourt unleashes Le Parkour. Okay, so you know how, if you think about, like, Jackie Chan movies, he talks about the way he sets his fights up, is you always want to start your protagonist in the lower position of a fight.

You want him to be, like, harmed in some way. You want him to have, like, his hands tied behind his back or something like that. In this scene, our protagonist is at the top of the fucking, like, silo, and Mr. Parkour parkours his way up the entire inside of the silo to get to John. Which is insane. He's in the dominant position for the entire fight.

It's fucking ridiculous. It's sort of a sinexic for the whole movie. There's no stakes. This is a much better movie if John McLean is the bad guy. and just happens to have a daughter and one friend. But so they're in the like industrial space in the back of the server farm. And this has a, this has a guy mulcher, like a bunch of the big spinning blades. Yeah, this is the big rock crusher that Benicio del Toro got got in in that movie.

They're like, it's for cooling the servers who gives a fun, whatever, it's here. That's what they say, but like, ah. Yeah, we cool the servers with these spinning razor blades. And so the guy parkers around, McLean shoots out of a bunch, misses. the guy takes his gun, shoots at McLean misses, and then McLean throws him into the mulcher, and that guy gets mulchish him. He couldn't park or out of that, you know?

No. It's just same. So much ceremonious. It's so good. He's gone. No blood, by the way, because the movie's afraid of showing him. Desire. As McLean is closing in,

the FBI are like, okay, we've got to get helicopters and go out there and rescue him. And also send, like, an F-35 for no reason. we'll come important later which Timothy Oliphant hears and he's like okay we all have to leave and I'm taking the big truck captures Justin Long as like

decrypt this you're coming with me until you decrypt this until you enter the sort of like number that is longer than like everything has ever existed yeah on their way out as they're being taken to the truck Justin Long's like oh geez Rick and then and then Lucy McClain's

like you've got to grow a bigger pair of balls this is important I'm sending something up later, right? Yeah. And so they drive off in the big truck, two big trucks. John McLean shoots the truck driver of one of the trucks that he's on the outside of, thereby making a cheeky play for the Cronstein Rosette himself. And he jacks the truck.

Yeah, holding the truck at the time as well, which is. But so he's in this like tractor trailer rig there in this little van. Did the 9-11 hijackers win the Cronstein Rosette? Yes. I think four of them did, right? So like the others, arguably it's a sort of corporate enterprise thing, but like, yeah, they did, they did. So he's in this, uh, in the like 18 wheeler, they're in this little like hazmat van ahead of him. He's trying to chase them down. And they hack the F-35 sort of.

Yeah. They like direct it to the wrong car or something like that. They use computer. Yeah, Timothy elephant like gets on the radio and he's like, I'm the Marines just like you. you see that tractor trailer destroy that shit immediately which they try and do I describe this as and don't get me wrong I'm hyped for this next one

some ace combat shit but somehow in a negative way this shit this shit is fucking crazy I didn't know the F-35 could hover but it's cool some of them can the marine ones can and Rolls Royce did a good job on that shit

yeah but then the thing is in order to do this McLean drives into the track mania freeway interchange dimension which is much cheaper to do sort of CGI effects in Yeah He drives up a big swirly

interchange that makes no sense It sort of feels AI generated Even though it can't be Yeah it does And again everything is like yellow And sort of bronze coloured at this point For a movie that hates computers It sure is a lot of computers

Yeah It's mostly computer He ends up sort of like crashing The like truck into the F-35 and grappling onto the back of it. Yeah, the F-35 is like keeping pace with him as he goes up, this fucking ridiculous

hell to skilter-ass interchange. It's just, yeah, absolutely ridiculous fucking thing. But eventually he ends up on the F-35, and he's like on top of the fucking thing. John calls Warlock at one point and Kevin Smith's like, I'm still in the movie. Cool. Which immediately I cross out my big Kaufman

star for... No, can't have it. The F-35 pilot sees that the engine is like failing, which would have happened on its own if McLean had just waited. Injects. McLean rides the wreckage down.

Some F-35 pilot who's listening to this podcast in the cockpit. I'm like, hey! My brother in Christ, watch the master caution panel. John McLean crashes the F-35 and costs the federal government $100 million. Good.

Meanwhile, the bad guys get the bad guys get to the denouement warehouse with the climax of the movie is good. There's a really, there's a really, so like one of the guys, Benicio del Toro looking motherfucker, right, in Sicario too specifically. Italian guy, one of the Euroguns. So now chief Eurogoon, now that the parkour guy's been mulched, is he's one of the final goons left.

Yeah. So Timothy Oloffin throws him the like handcuffed McLean's daughter and says, hold this. And the word this in that. goes specifically directly into the misogyny file. He threatens Justin Long into putting in the password that's longer than the universe. John bursts in and opens fire.

Lucy McClain gets a moment of like, I get to do stuff too. She uses it. Sig P320 is a guy because Belicio del Toro is like holding her and she grabs his gun in its holster and shoots him in the foot with it. Why did you store that cocked with the safety catch on lock, dude?

I wouldn't have done that. waited long enough, it would have done that on its own. Also, juggling it. The same thing, McLean does the same thing to another guard at the warehouse, at the thing in West Virginia earlier. And I almost could have done the SIGP 320 joke a second time.

Imagine it again, chap. Timothy Ollifan gets John at gunpoint and then John puts the gun into John's shoulder wound and then John pulls the trigger so that it shoots Timothy Olyphan in the heart through his own shoulder But the way he does this is like, John's like, hey, watch your daughter get killed.

Say something funny, John, which is also what I've been saying the whole movie. You know, like, do a line. You know, make people remember the diehard movies they like. And John goes, what about yippy kai, mother gunshot noise? Because now we're scared of the word motherfucker. Everything is so soy. I don't know what I want to say that. But like, you could say fuck.

you could say fuck on the goddamn thing you put the blood in we're fine with the concept of ramming an SUV up a woman's ass but not with the word motherfucker you spend this whole time being like violently misogynist the entire way through it and you can't say

fuck at the end ridiculous there are some fucking further insults though because then Justin Long grabs a gun and kills the final henchman right I just want to find that I was going to say Justin Long because as we know from this franchise,

masculinity is when you kill people with your gun dick, right? Yeah, absolutely. We know about all the way from the first one. This is when, like in Die Hard One, John's helper has to kill a man with his gun dick, right? Yes, to get over killing that child beat it. Lucy is like, I respect you now, Daddy, the FBI arrive. Great.

Yeah. Yeah. The FBI hostage rescue team get to have a fun time fast roping in for nothing, which is nice. Wee! Yeah, cool. It's good they get to have fun with that. Yeah, Lucy introduces herself to someone as Lucy.

as Lucy McLean at one point just to be like she's accepted her dad back because her mom hasn't like rescued her from anything at all yeah

die hard one is like you get a relationship with your ex-wife back that's off the table now this is a more divorced movie despite the first two movies ostensibly being about being divorced and so now it's just like

you get a relationship back with your daughter which feels sadder and worse like I Yeah, because like your wife is someone who loves you. Your daughter is someone who is like allowing you to be in her life. Yeah.

That's kind of it. Yeah. It's not like she's even going to commit to living with you. And then weirdly, as they're all in sort of like getting in separate ambulances at the end, we've got to go back to dad moding in the most inscrutable possible way as a statement of masculinity. Where he goes to Justin Long and he's like, thank you for saving my daughter's life. If you ever tried to pursue a romantic relationship with her, I would have. have to beat you to death.

Yeah. Because I guess the assumption is in these kind of movies, that's what would happen here is. It's like, you'll be like, you can date my daughter, and that's like your success. But he just doesn't want to do it. No, he looks at Justin Long and he's like, hey, computers aren't always gay. They're clearly so into each other.

And it's like, there's an implied sort of romance there that's going to happen. But McLean is meant to be the kind of. of like hard ass about it and it's like he can't be a dad he can't fucking do it for real though because when Justin Long gets to the ambulance that goes away mary Elizabeth Winston is like oh so did like did he say anything about me and like I just want to fucking highlight three scenes back lucy told Justin Long grow a bigger pair of balls then he kills a man in front of her and then she's like oh my god like is he single and she's like oh like wow the movie is very clear about heterosexual masculinity being a violent fucking thing and about how that's cool

And I'm just like, men, if there are any men listening to the podcast who are genuinely not transgender women, of which I understand there's not many, but there must be like, I believe that there's like four or five maybe. You must understand that like, this is fucking insulting because like your, your worth as a person is so much more than like monkey smash. Like you can do so much more for the world than just like hurt people and kill people and be dominant and violent and like you're a human, like fucking rocks can kill people like germs can kill people. man, you can fucking love, and that is so much more important. But this movie is fucking insulting you by being like, yeah, in order to be a real man, you're the gender that does violence. And it's like, oh, fuck off. Like, it's like genuinely fucking misandry.

Yeah. And like, nobody even seems to like it or enjoy it or get anything from it. McLean's only reason for doing this is there is no one else who can do it. And then at the end, when he's like, oh, beat you to death if you fuck my daughter or whatever, it's like, it's so perfunctory. like his heart isn't in it and it never has been. Traged.

John McLean, transsexual woman. And then we end with CCR and I write down in my notes in 72 point font, OK, boomer. I hate this fucking movie. Can I say something about Israel? Yeah, gone.

Really at any time. I never said no to that sentence ever. So fantasies and exaggerations of vulnerability are a great way to justify state violence. Like we've all seen another of the last like three years, Israelis are very, very good at this. The U.S. and Britain,

obviously very good at it too. We see in fantasies of migrants as like military-aged males and benefit cheats and shit, right? Like illegal workers and so on. This film is another entry into that genre because it's like America is vulnerable to getting fucked in the cyber pussy

and that's why we have to kill Asian women with a car. And it's like, it's fucking disgusting, man. It fucking sucks. I fucking, it's, I hate this. fucking movie, man. I've had a lot to drink on this podcast movie.

It's a bad movie. It's a really bad fucking movie. It's really bad. Maggie Q deserved better. She's a better actor than this movie. As is Bruce Willis. Has this Mary Elizabeth Winston? Yeah. Glad she didn't have to be in the back half of it.

Timothy of it. I think the thing is, besides the like obvious color grading, this is the script in the direction. Like, 100%. Yeah. And the script is... Who wrote this? Dog shit.

I don't know. It's also like Mark Baumack and Dave Marconi. It's edited really uncertainly. I think, again, like the thing we identified about the murder that becomes a like fake out, it's sort of like, it's been through a lot of last minute edits. Wow. And it shows. I just looked up the movies Mark Bomback has done and he's, oh, he's a working director.

He's just like putting out movies. 2012's Total Recall. The Wolverine, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Divergent series Insurgent. He'll write your movie for you. I think of the Wolverine? I thought the Wolverine was not bad. Are you thinking of Logan? Possibly.

No, the Wolverine is the one that's in Japan. I don't know if I'm thinking of... I think you're thinking of Logan. Logan's a good one. The Wolverine is the one where the woman says that she has a degree in biochemistry and metaphysics? Sick. We should do the experts on series, actually. I love liberal arts programs.

Okay, well, we probably shouldn't. The thing is, we don't have to specify what we think about this subjectively, because we have a science-based system. It's called the scum system. It stands for smam, cultural insensitivity, unprovoked violence, and misogyny. On a scale of zero to seven, how smarmy is diehard 4.0. In all the wrong places. Yeah.

Like punitively smarmy. It doesn't even have any good lines after it. He shoots a guy out of a fucking, like, wall using a fire extinguisher, and he doesn't say anything cool. He just goes, like, that was loud. It's like, clang. You're right. It's fair.

It's trying to be smart-mey. It isn't very good. Yeah, I agree. But I want to mark it up for that. Yeah, same. Attempted smart. You get put in jail for attempted murder. That's true.

So, fine. Eight. Yeah, okay, fine. I was out of bullets. I was out of bullets. cultural insensitivity Oh my God Jesus fucking cry

Oh Come in a bit after the bicycle thieves I feel sorry for Mackey Q that she had to deal with this shit I was so bad You notice how like for instance Say tomorrow never dies Right

has an Asian actress in it and notably did not do any of this and when it did it put it in the mouth of the antagonist it had the novel idea of making the bad guy the racist instead of the good guy he was supposed to like John's more racist than the villain yes he is significantly yeah the villain is running like a fucking colorblind

employment system here is completely just on merit pure merit This has got to be like ace as well, right? Like, it's got to be. I think what else has been eight? It's like the specific confluence of racism and misogyny as well. Like it's like the phrase skinny Asian bitch, I think it was. The fact that he calls her a ninja? Yeah.

Put it up there, yeah, yeah, yeah. Johnny English Reborn Octopussy. This is like, it's like Austin Powers too. level like this is not acceptable yeah this is this is as racist as octopussy so eight again definitely unprovoked violence he does kill that guy but they made it so he didn't actually do it in the movie yeah we can't we can't we can't he didn't yeah yeah so like they really used to like my daughter thing to justify john mclean getting a lot more violent and diehard movies were always violent he always killed people he always killed people in ways that was kind of as far as the movie

experience went kind of sadistic part of the like kind of joy of diehard is watching Alan Rickman get thrown out of a skyscraper window right but like in this case a lot of it's more perfunctory in ways that sort of we haven't really mentioned like when he

hijacks the truck right he just he just fucking shoots the guy right yeah and throws him on onto the onto the time he was unarmed like there are multiple see even in the previous diehard where he'll like get someone out of a truck with his gun like he doesn't

he's not just killing he does do that yeah like in the tunnel I think as well that like the moment where Justin Long part of Justin Long acquiring real masculinity is killing a man

I know that that guy was armed so that was provoked but I feel like we need to give that some points somewhere and this seems like the best category to give it points on absolutely it's not fully up there in the Rambo zone

but I think it's got to be pretty high yeah I would say five five yeah totally and then misogy Jesus fucking Christ It'll be rescued by this score Well So yeah

There's several kinds of women It turns out There's the kind that knows Kung Fu shit Who will be killed There's your daughter Who is kind of your property And then there's your ex-wife

Brackets not appearing in this movie So there's two kinds of women The kind that you kill And the kind that you must protect Yes Yeah And would you believe that it comes down On racial grounds

That's crazy Yeah, it's crazy! And like, you've got to sexualize the violence against them. Fucking how, like... It's really bad. Let's give this guy a bad score. Fuck you, I have 4.0. Okay, fuck.

I've had a lot to drink. I can try and do math, right? Okay. 16. The Kill James Bond work Christmas drinks that happen while you're at work. Yeah, while we're working, yeah. Okay, that gives it a total score of 29. which is pretty fucking bad.

Let me go back and see if I can find... DiHod 3 was 19, so we're significantly worse than that. That tracks. The worst one is still Rambo 4 at 36. I think that's a useful comparison. It is. DiHod 2 was 18. DiHod 1 was 14, so they are getting worse,

and this is a sharp increase. I think the really instructive thing to compare this to is when we do Taken. Yes. And then I think that's worth comparing to and remind me of that. However, as you say, we got one more Christmas diehard in us.

There's another. Live free or die hard. That's actually, this one, it's a good day to die hard. They name all these fucking movies. They name all fucking stupid. This was either live free or die hard or die hard 4.0.

This was diehard 4.0. The previous was die hard with a vengeance. this one's live free or die hard when next is a good day to die hard cool is this the are we going to enter to sincerity zone is this our Christmas episode it comes out on the 19th

we can give it if I want I think that's fair the next one comes out on 26th yeah I feel I feel very positively about not this movie but this podcast of course it is it is an absolute

pleasure it is an honour and a privilege to get to do this somehow for a living yeah that's crazy my friends yeah who are also absolute delights to work with

it has been just astounding the fact that it's been going for what four years yeah how the fuck did we make that happen I don't know well the answer is we didn't

you did listen to right by by by by by dint of your faithful support we were able to talk absolute shit about films for four years of our lives. You have had like an advanced degree in film studies off of this,

but only bad films, crucial. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. Yeah. I feel looking forward to the end of 2026, I feel bad about the world, but I feel good about Kill James Bond. I feel like, we're still going to be here.

We're going to get to a good day to die hard. Yeah, listen, we're going to do this. We're going to be doing this around a barrel full of like burning cardboard if we have to. Oh yeah, fuck yeah. Oh yeah. Whatever kind of form that takes, because this is too much fun to stop doing. Yeah, it's a load-bearing pillar of my fucking mental health.

Absolutely. Mine does. Yeah, it's a low-bearer pillar of my financial life, actually. That as well. Yeah, it's a load-bearing pillar of my landlord's financial health as well. So shout out to all of you for supporting financially my landlord. Various of landlords. And I'll tell you what listeners, I'm going to be spending, hopefully going to be spending quite a bit of next year in undisclosed location, doing undisclosed acting work.

Disputed island between Russia and Japan. Technically, yeah. But yeah, so, but I'm going to keep doing this fucking podcast from the dimension I'll be in. So I, because I can't, because it's great, because I love it. I do love that, like, a large amount of season one of Kilgeness One was recorded with you in Romania. That's true. I got to hear a lot about streetcats and I had a wonderful time of that. So we're going to hear, we're going to undisclose a lot of details about your location.

We'll disclose it. We'll disclose the vague details about the location. Whatever. The first three digits of the, of the latitude. But of course, we and I'm sure all the listeners wish you every success and sort of like possible pleasure and relaxation in sunny undisclosed location. You said that in your Christmas card. It made me very happy. I did.

Yeah. Yeah. Of course, we hope that you, the listener, have a fantastic Christmas, a fantastic holiday season. Merry Christmas listeners. And happy holidays if you celebrate some other kind of religion. But I think we've been very clear over the course of 2025. This is a Christian podcast. Very Christian.

This is an extremely Christian Catholic. Catholic. Catholic. I'm going to make you all watch Andrei Rubleph again Incage. A Protestant bullshit. Tradcast podcast only.

Remember when the Pope had lunch with three transgender women? Two of them were us. Pretty good. Yeah, we've convinced him. We've convinced him. He's getting woker and woken. I love to have lunch with the Pope. I got some questions. Anyway, thank you so much

for listening, genuinely. It's not a Christian podcast. That's a joke. We got to record. another podcast. We do, and we're going to get drunker to do it. So please look forward to, I guess, on Boxing Day. Boxing Day, Boxing Day, Boxing Day. Diamonds are forever with no notes.

Jesus, fucking Christ, Doug. And we're all drunk. Baja. And I think I can get it most from that. I think I could spit it all out. See you in a week's time, beautiful listeners. Have a beautiful week and indeed holiday. We'll see you very soon.

Thank you so much. Bye. All dearly, thank you for supporting the show. Muah, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma. Mm-hmm. Thank you for listening to yet another episode of Kill James Bond. And we're well and truly into the end year celebrations. This episode, on the free feed.

Next episode, also on the free feed, is going to be Diamonds of Forever with No Notes. We recorded it directly after recording. this one, so the level of inebriation continues and compounds, one might even say. And then the week after that, also, also on the free feed, is going to be a quick Q&A. We'll send the queues out just after Christmas, and then we'll aid them just before the New Year, and you'll hear them on, let's say, the 2nd of January. But we would not even exist without the love and support of our beautiful Patreon supporters,

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Please don't stretch yourself if things are hard. And if things are properly difficult, just stop paying for the Patreon, just give it a couple of months, pay for like one month, download the whole backlog, pay for one month when you can afford it again. Please don't worry. But special thanks, as always, to those who do choose to go above and beyond, to our 15 pounds and above patrons. And those are low, Bjorn Stotter, Freya Aloysius, Candy Fox, no name, Gustavo Lira, Elspeth Hunt refused to give up on. Halloween, that's true. Jordan Gammy, Nick Boris, Frankenstein, Hannah Oberhardt, joining the war on Christmas on the side of communism. George Rohak, Canada will remember Devon's promise to serve in any land war against a criminal American empire. Uh, it might not be Canada, that's all I'm saying. The Yarrick, thank you for compared,

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Next time, on the freebie.