Note: This film is back in theaters (just in time for Christmas) and I very much recommend you see it while it is still there.
One of the greatest action films ever made.
This movie centers around John McClane (Bruce Willis), a New York police officer. On Christmas Eve, he goes to California to spend the holiday with his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia) and kids. However, when he goes to visit his wife's workplace, a group of terrorists hold everyone in the building hostage. He then takes on these terrorists to save his wife and as many of the other hostages that he can.
This movie has everything you could want from an action film. The action set pieces here are as good as they come. They are beautifully staged, exciting and suspenseful. However, what is truly wonderful about these action scenes is just how perfectly paced they are and that each one builds on the last. The action scenes gradually get larger and more exciting as the film goes on. It does not rush into the big action set pieces but instead has the smaller scale action scenes come first. By the final action scenes, you are truly glued to the screen. This masterful way of telling such a story keeps the film from ever become repetitive or boring. It is rare to find action movies that are this well constructed and that is a major reason why this film stands out. The action scenes of course also benefit from how charismatic Bruce Willis is (who proves himself here to be a perfect action hero) and from a wonderfully dark sense of humor. As exciting as this movie is, it also has some real laugh out loud moments. Some of these perfectly play with the mixture of pure violence and the Christmas setting. The juxtaposition of these two things that seem like they shouldn't go together provide the movie with some of it most humorous and memorable moments. This juxtaposition is used expertly not only in the action but in masterful use of Christmas music on the soundtrack. Also adding to the fun of this movie is Alan Rickman's fantastic performance as the villain, as he is simply a joy to watch here. It is hard to believe this was his film debut.
As much as this is a very violent action movie, it is also a heartwarming Christmas movie at the same time. The early scenes of this film play out more as a feel-good Christmas movie than an action film. This works out perfectly as it makes it so that when the film moves into pure action, we already care about John McClane and understand how much he truly loves his wife and kids. This makes the action all the more exciting because we have our emotional connection with everything that is going on.
This movie is based in a book by Roderick Thorp called Nothing Lasts Forever. He got the idea for the book after seeing the movie, The Towering Inferno (1974) and having a dream involving a man being chased through a massive building by people shooting at him with guns. This book was in fact a sequel to his book The Detective, which as some of you might know was the basis of a 1968 movie of the same title starring Frank Sinatra.
The original screenplay for this film was quite dark and not a lot of fun. Director John McTiernan however felt the movie should be much more fun and even incorporate humor into it. This idea worked perfectly. I think we all can thank him; we got the movie we got. As strange as it might seem today, Bruce Willis was a controversial choice to star in this movie. At the time he was mostly known for the TV show, Moonlighting and many felt that he was too comedic of an actor to make a good action hero. However, his lighter comedic charm is just what made him one of the great movie action heroes. He was actually still staring in Moonlighting while making this movie and one of the later episodes of that show has a Die Hard poster in a video rental store.
This movie of course went on to be a major success and was followed by four sequels, Die Hard 2 (1990), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Live Free or Die Hard (2007) and A Good Day to Die Hard (2013). While these sequels are definitely fun movies, none of them could fully capture the magic of this first film.
Resources Used
Christmas in the Movies by Jeremy Arnold
https://www.imdb.com/?ref_=nv_home
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