and I swear...

I've just been to see Die Hard 4.0 (or "Live Free or Die Hard" if you like. I prefer the UK title, to be honest. It's simpler and has fewer "War on Terror" connotations).

What was it like?

Well, it was pretty much exactly what you would expect from a Die Hard film. It was both very silly and very entertaining. Apparently people had been worried that the producers' decision to push for a PG-13 rating in the USA would mean that the film would be a somehow watered-down version of a Die Hard film.

Well, allow me to reassure you that this is definitively not the case. This is the most violent and blood-thirsty film of the whole sequence. Yeah, I know buildings and airports and subways and stuff all get blown up in the first three films, but that's somehow quite impersonal destruction. In this film, people get killed. Often quite indiscriminately. People get beaten. They get shot in the knee. They get chopped up in cooling fans.

So how exactly did this manage to get a PG-13 certificate and thus be available to that all important pre-teen audience?

They cut out the swearing.

Seriously.

There is notably less swearing in this film. Two "fucks", obviously including one "Yippee ki-yay motherfucker" right at the very end.

Does this affect the film? Not really. What really gets me though is that apparently lots of fairly indiscriminate violence is deemed to be okay for an impressionable young audience, but somehow swearing is totally unacceptable.

What?

So blowing up buildings, shooting people and stuff is okay, but saying "fuck" is bad?

Jesus.

We're doomed. We really are doomed.

On the plus side, the soundtrack to the film very prominently features some Fogerty.... Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son", to be precise.

Yee haw!