From the Vault: Die Hard

In which I review a movie from my personal collection.

So I nearly didn't get a chance to review this movie this week.  You'd have thought that you could find something like Die Hard at any Best Buy, Walmart or Barnes & Noble in town, but you'd actually be wrong.  And on that rare occasion when you do actually find it, it's in a collector's tin with all of its sequels, and I'm not paying upwards of $50 for what essentially amounts to one good movie.  Thankfully something called The Internet exists, which brings us to where we are now.

It's Christmas time, and all through LA not a creature was stirring, except John McClain (alright, alright, I'll stop doing that).  When New York cop John McClain visits his family in LA, he does so hoping that he can reconcile the differences between himself and his estranged wife.  But during the office Christmas party, a group terrorists take the party-goers hostage while they attempt to break into a safe and steal fortune in bearer bonds.  Now McClain, who was able to escape capture, must lead a one-man war against a dozen armed men in order to save his wife.

Die Hard isn't just any old action movie, it is the action movie: the prototypical mold from which everything that followed had to measure up against.  It found the perfect summertime balance between great characters, great plot, great one-liners and great action.  It wasn't trying to be anything deep or meaningful, it just wanted to be a fun time.

And in that sense, it succeeded at doing everything that it set out to do.  Despite the surreal logic that lead to the a-typical casting of Bruce Willis in a role that was initially written for Frank Sinatra, John McClain has proven himself to be the definitive everyman action star: holding his own against muscle-bound icons like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.

Despite being a touch more simplistic than many of the villains that followed him, Hans Grubber succeeds as an antagonist because of his total commitment to the bit.  He may not be as inherently interesting as The Joker or Raoul Silva, but he's the best possible version of the exact brand of evil he's going after.  Between his menacing accent, his unsettlingly gentleman demeanor and how readily he dispatches those who are no longer of any use to him, he's one of the most strikingly recognizable movie villains of the 20th Century.

While Die Hard was hardly striking new ground with its omniscient point of view, it makes probably the best use of it of any movie that I've ever seen.  It's positively brimming with dramatic irony; we see every twist, double-cross and hidden motive long before the other characters do.

We know that Hans & Co. are just a bunch of thieves while everybody else thinks that they're politically minded terrorists.  We understand that McClaine is a cop on the loose before Hans' men are clued into that fact.  We're let in on how comfortable the feds are at losing huge swaths of hostages even as those hostages anxiously await their arrival as their saviors.  Die Hard's that April Fools Day joke that only you and the guy telling it are clued in to, followed by upwards of two hours of explosive fun at all of the characters' expense.

With as self-aware and well-made of a movie as Die Hard is, its exceptionally few faults add up to very little.  Sure, Holly isn't an especially well-realized character and doesn't have anything all that interesting to do.  Yes, there's an unfortunate "father knows best" subtext blown up to Herculean proportions lying just underneath the surface narrative.  And yeah, the movie has more interconnecting narratives than it necessarily needs (Argyle and Richard - the limo driver and the reporter - being the most obvious).  But when the movie's this good in every other respect, do these minor issues really lessen it in any meaningful way?

Much like Hans is the perfect version of the character that he's trying to be (and McClain too for that matter), Die Hard is the perfect version of the movie that it wants to be.  It's a fun, action-packed ride with more than enough explosions for the casual movie fan and more than enough meaningfully crafted characters for the more adroit ones.  Its the kind of movie that even non-fans of the genre get absolutely pumped for, because it's really just that good of a movie.

Rating:  8.5/10

Buy on BluRay:  Yippie Ki-Yay, Motherfucker

So what's your favorite action movie of all time?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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