Twas the night before Christmas, and all throughout the house not a creature was stirring, except… Terrorists taking over Nakatomi Plaza, naturally! Yes although I didn’t manage to look at all five films and the three games I wanted to over Christmas I still wanted to cover the original and its sequel at least given their setting, getting to the others next year; so let’s start unsurprisingly with the first one! Die Hard is one of those classics that deserves every bit of praise that has come its way, both for being a great film itself and for how much it influenced pop culture in the years since. So while I won’t be adding anything new to the long list of reviews this film has racked up, I’ll be adding to it regardless!
As weird as it is to describe the plot of Die Hard, given its plot is so widely known that when similar plots are used its described as “Die Hard but on/in location X”, the film centres on John McClane (Bruce Willis), a New York cop whose wife and children moved to LA when his wife got a promotion at work but he stayed behind to “finish off some cases”, though in reality he and Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) had a big fight over it. Either way its Christmas so McClane has come to LA to be with his family and to his surprise he’s given a limo ride to her place of work, Nakatomi Plaza, and among the sleaze and the drinking he finds her… and they immediately get into an argument. Taking the advice of a fellow frequent flyer he takes on his shoes and balls his feet to reduce stress just as a group of heavily armed terrorists break into the building and take everyone hostage. John manages to escape to the upper floors and thus begins a night of John McClane slowly taking down several terrorists and scuppering their plans, but the journey isn’t easy.
Welcome to the party, pals!
This is what impressed most people at the time, unlike your Schwarzenegger or Stallone action heroes Bruce Willis’ McClane is extremely vulnerable, sure he gets some great one liners and has some rather incredible set pieces but he also takes damage (especially to his feet thanks to be barefoot the whole time), fails to stop the terrorists plans a few times and is clearly the half of his relationship that was in the wrong, all but admitting he stayed in New York because he didn’t think Holly would be able to stick it. It’s such a great performance full of humour, charm and toughness that its no wonder it launched Willis’ career out of TV land.
As for the terrorists? Well Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber is nearly just as iconic and is similarly dripping with charisma and wit while also being clearly “evil”. His “negotiations” with Joseph Takagi (James Shigeta) over the code to the Nakatomi vault that ends with him putting a bullet in his brain is a classic moment but perhaps not as much as his interactions with McClaine, both over the radio (including the debut of “yippie-ki-yay motherf**ker”) and in person when Gruber pretends to be an innocent hostage but McClane doesn’t fall for it. Speaking of a vault the whole terrorists taking over the building to free their “anarchist freedom fighter brothers” in countries around the world is in reality a front because they’re manipulating the US law enforcement’s by-the-book method of dealing with terrorists to cut the power to the building and give them access to a small fortune. I love that, it would be easy to make this a country v country, terrorist v government story (hell most copy-cat films do!) but instead the terrorists are using that cliché to their advantage. It’s a fun twist.
“What did he just call my mother?”
Then we get to the side characters. Reginald VelJohnson plays Al Powell, a local LAPD Sergeant that gets dragged into this when McClane manages to get a message out that something was happening at Nakatomi and then tosses a body onto his car’s roof when he was about to leave due to the terrorist’s peaceful front. They bond over the radio during the film, including Powell revealing that he took a desk job because he accidentally shot a kid and couldn’t bring himself to point his gun again… *ahem*… We also have Argyle (De’voreaux White) who is McClane’s limo driver that parks in the parking lot in case he doesn’t get on with Holly and ends up trapped down there, and Richard Thornburg (William Atherton) who is a complete bastard news reporter who basically makes everything 100x worse throughout the film for the “hero” characters.
Sadly beyond Karl (Alexander Godunov), Hans’ second-in-command who becomes obsessed with McClane after he killed his brother in the first third of the film, the rest of the terrorists are all pretty forgettable. Maybe Theo (Clarence Gilyard) stands out a bit more due to being the American tech guy in amongst all the Euro terrorists but that’s about it. I will also mention Hart Bochner as Harry Ellis, a Nakatomi executive that excels at being unpleasant, sleazy and off-his-head on drugs. All round though it’s a great cast but the film is rooted in the Willis / Rickman dynamic that works so well.
Overall Thoughts:
In a film of iconic scenes, this has to be the most iconic!
To say Die Hard still holds up is an understatement. It hits all the right notes for a fun action film: charismatic protagonist and antagonist, great action set pieces, well paced and a top class finale. It’s no wonder so many other films and TV series continued to “do a Die Hard”, it’s still hard to top.
I mean I’m not just going to list the action set pieces here, but to sum it up the law enforcement get out smarted (including a SWAT team being taken out and some FBI guys in a chopper being taken down) but McClane manages to stay just that little bit ahead of Gruber leading to a final confrontation where Hans has Holly hostage and John manages to distract him by laughing at the terrorist leader’s repeating of his foe’s newest catchphrase before suddenly shooting him and his final henchmen, leading to Hans nearly pulling Holly out of the nearby window but McClane frees Holly’s arm by removing her new watch, leading to Hans plummeting to his death in slow motion.
Karl, long brown hair guy and bloke with leather jacket prepare to attack McClane…
Holly and John meet Powell outside Nakatomi and the latter saves them from Karl, who managed to survive being hung during his final showdown with John, by shooting him, unsurprisingly getting over his fear at the right moment! Holly punches Thornburg for that extra layer of satisfaction and then the two head out with Argyle, fresh from ramming his limo into the terrorist’s van and stopping Theo as “Let it Snow” plays. Classic!
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