Live Free or Die is a 2006 American comedy film starring Aaron Stanford

Aaron Stanford

Aaron Stanford is an American actor, best known for his role as Pyro in X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand films, and Doug Bukowski in the 2006 The Hills Have Eyes remake....

, Paul Schneider

Paul Schneider (actor)

Paul Andrew Schneider is an American film actor.-Early life and career:Schneider was born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina. He graduated from the North Carolina School of Arts...

, Zooey Deschanel

Zooey Deschanel

Zooey Claire Deschanel is an American actress, musician, and singer-songwriter. In 1999, Deschanel made her film debut in Mumford, followed by her breakout role as young protagonist William Miller's troubled older sister Anita in Cameron Crowe's 2000 semi-autobiographical film Almost Famous...

, Michael Rapaport

Michael Rapaport

Michael David Rapaport is an American, actor, director and a comedian. He has acted in more than forty films since the early 1990s...

, Judah Friedlander

Judah Friedlander

Judah Friedlander is an American actor and comedian, known for his trademark trucker hats, oversized glasses and unkempt appearance, which he retains in many of his screen roles.-Early life:...

, Kevin Dunn

Kevin Dunn

Kevin Dunn is an American actor who has appeared in supporting roles in a number of films since the 1980s. His roles include Colonel Hicks in the 1998 version of Godzilla, Sam Witwicky's father in Transformers, and Oscar Galvin, the primary antagonist in the 2010 action thriller...

, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach

Ebon Moss-Bachrach

Ebon Moss-Bachrach is an American stage and screen actor. He attended high school at Amherst Regional High School in Massachusetts and graduated from Columbia University. Ebon is involved with photographer Yelena Yemchuk...

. It was written and directed by former Seinfeld

Seinfeld

Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...

writers Gregg Kavet

Gregg Kavet

Gregg Kavet is a writer and director who worked on NBC's Seinfeld for several seasons with collaborator Andy Robin. The team wrote episodes including "The Jimmy", "The Hot Tub", "The Caddy", "The Bottle Deposit", "The Fatigues", "The Comeback", "The Nap", and "The Slicer"...

 and Andy Robin

Andy Robin

Andy Robin is a writer and director and student at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. He started his career at Saturday Night Live and spent several seasons on NBC's Seinfeld, initially solo, later partnering with collaborator Gregg Kavet...

.

Plot

A clueless, aspiring criminal named John "Rugged" Rudgate (Stanford) spends his days forging rebate coupons and selling speakers out the back of his van. One day, Rugged runs into an old acquaintance, the dim-witted Jeff Lagrand (Schneider), who recently returned home to help his cynical sister run the storage facility that they inherited from their father. When Rugged tries to force his way into the Lagrand family business, things go terribly wrong—and the situation gets even more complicated when an emotionally unstable cop begins investigating.

Reception

The film-review aggregate website

Website

A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...

 Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

 gave the film a 40% approval rating. Film critic Frank Lovece

Frank Lovece

Frank Lovece is an American journalist, author, comedy performer and comic book writer. He was additionally one of the first professional Web journalists, becoming an editor of a Silicon Alley start-up in 1996....

 of Film Journal International

Film Journal International

Film Journal International is a motion-picture industry trade magazine published by the American company Prometheus Global Media. It is a sister publication of Adweek, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, and other periodicals....

praised Aaron Stanford as "the young Steve Buscemi

Steve Buscemi

Steven Vincent "Steve" Buscemi is an American actor, writer and film director. An associate member of the renowned experimental theater company The Wooster Group, Buscemi has starred and supported in successful Hollywood and indie films including New York Stories, Mystery Train, Reservoir Dogs,...

" and wrote that despite the film's "lack of visual click, Live Free or Die manages to be poignant without even being maudlin" and that "none of the movie's flaws negate its many remarkable little performances and casually insightful script.'

External links

• Official website