Directed By: John McTiernan
Starring: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia
Tag line: "It will blow you through the back wall of the theater!"
Trivia: Richard Gere was approached to play the lead in this film, but turned it down
I’m watching Die Hard a tad early (or a tad late, depending on how you look at things). Seeing as it takes place at Christmas time, this 1988 action classic has been a Holiday fixture around my house for years (I normally wait until the middle or end of December to watch it, at which point I’ve had my fill of Holiday cheer, and am ready for a kick-ass movie). This past December, I relied on Lethal Weapon (another “sort-of” Christmas movie) to break up the sugary sweet monotony, but most years, Die Hard more than gets the job done.
It’s Christmas time, and New York cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) has just arrived in L.A. to reconcile with his estranged wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia). Catching a ride with a limo driver named Argyle (De'voreaux White), McClane makes his way to the Nakatomi building, where Holly’s company (which is headquartered there) is having their annual Christmas party on the 30th floor. But the couple’s happy reunion is cut short when a group of terrorists, led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), burst in and begin taking hostages (one of whom is Holly). McClane, who was in the bathroom changing at the time, sneaks away and does a little spying on Gruber and his henchmen, during which he discovers their plan: to steal over $600 million in bonds that are neatly tucked away in the company’s safe. Yet what Gruber didn’t count on was a feisty New York cop who, hiding throughout the building, manages to knock off a few terrorists while also alerting the police to the situation. Over the course of the evening, McClane does whatever he can to disrupt Gruber’s grand scheme. But how long will it be before Gruber finds out who McClane is, and why he’s there, a revelation that would immediately put Holly in the greatest of danger?
As action movies go, Die Hard is a perfect storm, a stunt-filled shoot-‘em-up with a great lead character, a superb villain, and lots of excitement to get our pulse pounding. Through much of the movie, Willis’ John McClane has the upper hand on Gruber, staying one step ahead of the terrorists and generating plenty of laughs as he does so (after killing one terrorist, McClane attaches a note to his dead body, a message for Gruber that reads “Now I have a machine gun. Ho Ho Ho”). Alan Rickman is equally as good in the role of Hans Gruber, a cold, calculating thief who's meticulously planned everything out, only to have it all up-ended by McClane. Also good are Reginald VelJohnson as the policeman on ground level who keeps McClane abreast, via walkie-talkies, of what the police and F.B.I. are planning to do; and William Atherton as a reporter whose tenacity nearly leads to disaster. But in the final scheme of things, Die Hard is the “Willis & Rickman show”. Sure, the action is insane; along with all the gunfights and explosions, there’s a thrilling sequence involving a fire hose. Yet what makes Die Hard even more intense is the game of cat and mouse between McClane and Gruber, leaving us wondering which man is the cat, and which is the mouse.
I saw a number of great movies in the summer of 1988, at which point I was working at our neighborhood McDonald’s. Luckily, many of my co-workers were also movie fans, and aside from Die Hard, the group of us checked out Eddie Murphy’s brilliant Coming to America; the John Candy / Dan Aykroyd comedy The Great Outdoors; and the Robert DeNiro / Charles Grodin buddy adventure, Midnight Run. I also caught a couple of films with my father and brother that summer: the raunchy baseball sex comedy Bull Durham, and the hilarious A Fish Called Wanda. All are fun in their own right, but the best of the bunch is easily Die Hard, a movie that is, and most likely always will be, the quintessential action flick.
