Justin Long and Bruce Willis in "Live Free or Die Hard." Photo ©Twentieth Century Fox

I love this movie, and yesterday I caught most of it on cable. Coming in late wasn’t a problem – after all, this was the third time I’d watched it this week (I really love this film).

And I reveled again in the outrageous stunts, the whipcracking tense and funny script, and the performances. Bruce Willis’s John McClane continues to be endearing, though Timothy Olyphant was awfully stiff as the lead villain Peter Gabriel. (Immediately after this I watched him in Hitman, where he looked awful with a shaved head and played #47 as Peter Gabriel all over again.)

And Justin Long was wonderful as Matt Farrell. I’d found Long appealing and hilarious as Mac Guy (loved those ads, even though I’m a PC user), and to me he lifted this particular Die Hard movie up to second best of the series. (The original can’t be eclipsed – Alan Rickman made sure of that.) Every time I see Live Free or Die Hard, I wonder why it didn’t make Justin Long an instant star.

Could McClane and Farrell really have survived a shootout in Matt’s apartment, a massive car wreck á la Sylvester Stallone’s Daybreak, and possibly the world’s biggest gas explosion, not to mention McClane’s solo fight with the Harrier jet? No, of course not – but who cares?