Family Film: With a Vengeance

As an obligatory fan of Minutemen--a Disney Channel offering targeted at nine-year-olds--about which I should not still be posting five months after its premiere, I'd be lying if I said I weren't somewhat impressed by an amateur trailer that makes the movie look like Die Hard 5.

Die Hard 5 to Pretty Much Write Itself

If I may be so bold as to predict John McTiernan's pitch for his next project, a return to the action franchise he helped build:

It's Christmas Eve and John McClane's (which family member hasn't he rescued from a hostage situation yet? his son?) son, who is a rookie corrections officer in a Los Angeles-area prison, is taken hostage during an inmate uprising. In order to infiltrate the facility and heroically save his boy, McClane enters a guilty plea--even though he TOTALLY ISN'T GUILTY--to charges of lying to the FBI about something he actually didn't have anything to do with. Seriously. He hardly even knew that disgraced private investigator. But he gets sentenced to four months in prison anyway--which is bullshit, right? So while McClane is on the bus to jail, his lawyer successfully appeals and the sentence is overturned. The end.

While acknowledging that the story has some third act problems, I've got to believe that such a film would at least be better than that Rollerball remake.