Yippie-kay-yay, motherfuckers.
Thirty years ago, Bruce Willis went from being a slightly
obscure comic actor to a vest-wearing wisecracking action badass, Alan Rickman
fell from a tower, and we got ourselves an action Christmas classic that has
been oft imitated but extremely rarely bettered (if ever). And yes, now that it’s
time to finally discuss Yuletide in celluloid, I wanted to get a mistletoe-flavored
favorite out of the way.
I think we all know the plot—John McClane is a weary cop
jetting from New York to California to visit his wife, who has chosen to kick
off a career in a Japanese-owned skyscraper surrounded by cocaine-snorting
eighties douchebags. Before he can drive their relationship even further into
the ground, John finds the building seized by a gang of German terrorists led
by the master of despicable yet strangely alluring British bad guys, Alan
Rickman, as Hans Gruber. Gun battles, explosions, and improvized use of Santa
Hats ensue. You may not think it’s the absolute best action film ever, but I
can’t think of anyone who doesn’t get a grin on their face watching it.
But what makes this film so great on the technical level, which
so many others failed to get? First and foremost—it’s the script. There’s not
an ounce of fat on it—everything, from a Rolex watch to a framed picture—plays some
sort of part in proceedings. You may think that the news crew jumping on the
unfurling terrorist incident is just another funny subplot, but it proves key
in Gruber uncovering McClane’s identity and raising the stakes ever higher. That’s
crucial in rewarding the viewer for paying attention, something I feel is always
a good mark, and playing into the feel of escalation throughout. Bruce starts
off against singular gunmen and just trying to stay ahead of them, before we
start getting into battles with the LAPD and building renovation by means of
plastic explosive. Put simply—there’s never a dull moment.
Then there’s the presentation. One of the main screenwriters,
Steven de Souza, penned one of the perennial hypermacho, spent-casing strewn
action vehicles of the 80s, Schwarzenegger’s Commando. Much like Rambo or
Seagal, Arnie’s character there single-handedly massacres platoons in a single
sweep of his constantly firing machinegun, and barely gets scratched after
fistfights and vehicular manslaughter. Don’t get me wrong, I love Commando, but
you have to appreciate how much Die Hard shook things up by having a protagonist
who actually has to use guile, trickery, and every cranny of his environment
just to survive. You see McClane’s vest get torn up more and more through the film,
you see the scars add up, you see his feet bleeding from torn-up glass. Hell,
even the skyscraper itself gets ever more damaged as the carnage mounts up. It
really gives the sense of an ongoing struggle, and that level of verisimilitude
is crucial to get right for the making of a classic.
Then there’s the cast and characters. Bruce Willis makes a wiseass
you love to cheer on, whose frustration at the incompetence of the LAPD is all
too relatable, as he resorts to body-splattering extremes just to get their
attention. He makes mistakes, he gets beat up, he himself seems surprised he’s
still alive. Reginald VelJohnson, better known as a sitcom actor, brings that
same sort of out of his depth lovability to his supporting character. William Atherthon,
apparently destined to play every prick in the eighties after Ghostbusters, is just
the right level of annoying to balance things out. And then there’s the one,
the all too rightfully smug, Hans Gruber courtesy of Alan Rickman. A hero isn’t
much without a good villain, and Gruber barely misses a beat, adapting and
adjusting to McClane’s interference, and damn near getting away with it. He has
every detail accounted for, and when you’ve got an intelligent bad guy against
an improvising good guy, it makes the proceedings deliciously gripping and
dynamic.
And, of course, there’s the Christmas bit. Oh, some say, but
it’s not really a Christmas movie, it was released in July after all, there’s
too many explosions, yadda yadda yadda. It has all the great music—and I mean
the actual great music, not those infuriating ditties the radio insists on
playing—like Run-DMC and Sinatra. It has the aesthetic, from the wrapping paper
to the decorations. And, above all, it’s fundamentally about a man trying to
reconnect with his family in the season…who just so happens to need to blow up
some criminals in the process. Sure, it may not be specifically about Christmas
itself like Miracle on 34th Street or something, but like Gremlins,
it’s something I think we all love to spice up the holiday season with.
Now, we have to talk about the subsequent sequels. None of
them lived up to the first, though some came closer than others. Die Hard 2 had
some enjoyable moments, although it felt far more convoluted in its setup, and
in many ways trying too hard to emulate the first while just not having the
ingredients done right. Die Hard 3 is arguably the best of the rest, with
Jeremy Irons having a great time as another Gruber, and Samuel L. Jackson being
a fun counterpart to Willis, but it went on just a bit too long and neither
ending the filmmakers came up with felt completely satisfying. Die Hard 4 was a
big dumb stupid modern action film, but had some enjoyable spectacle to make up
for it—though by that point it simply wasn’t Die Hard anymore. And 5…well, let’s
just say that it’s that kind of film where the director couldn’t even be
bothered to keep certain shots in focus. Yeah.
The sequels, and all those other imitators—Speed, Under
Siege, The Rock—all tended to stumble on at least one of those elements the
original did so right. Either the cast wasn’t done as good as they could’ve, or
things got too ridiculous, or the pacing just felt numbing than rising at just
the right pace. Eventually, action films would wisely give up trying to
replicate Die Hard, and when the Matrix came around, they’d focus on entirely
different things. Bruce Willis himself would go onto play a variety of action
badasses, including his character from The Fifth Element, a film that wisely
decided to just go ‘screw it’ and be a silly piece of fun cartoony schlock.
That’s not to say nothing like this came close to the
original—in the 2010s, we had the likes of The Raid: Redemption, which gave us
brutal bone-crushing martial arts action that gets your heart racing and your
senses raised. But even that arguably didn’t have the same level of memorable
characters or quotes.
So if you haven’t seen this film for the Christmas period
this year, you might as well do it and grab a white vest while you’re at it. It
really is as great as everyone says. But while Die Hard took Bruce Willis from
comedy actor to action star, there was a certain other infamous Christmas flick
a few years later that tried to take action star to comedy—you might just know what
that one is.
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