Fast paced action, a superb popcorn movie!

Rating: 8/10 (23 June 2004)

Die Hard
John McClane is in California to visit his wife, whom he is seperated from due to different dreams of careers and he hasn't been able to handle he succes in her new job. But it's christmas so he comes to see his family, while picking up his wife at her firm, a group of terrorist shows up and holds all guests as hostages, John McClane manages to escape and is now the only hope to save the hostages and alert the police.
Overall action movies are always very similar and predictable, and this movie is too predictable, perhaps that is the only big weakness of this movie, because who can deny there is something special with Die Hard. Die Hard is simply a very progressive, accelerated and perfectly paced action movie, not only does it tell a good story, and even comes with a few complexes, it also brings some of the best and most solid action ever to be seen.
John McTiernan has proven to be a solid action director over the years, after the breakthrough with Predator he made this classic action flick, that never seems to be getting old, even now. 17 years later, it still works as well as it did 17 years ago, brilliant.
This is just what I suppose we can call a perfect popcorn movie, the kind of movie where you lean back and just let the thrill ride begin, you know things will end happily, but still it entertains for the 2 hours it lasts, and it entertains at a very high level. Perhaps one of the weaknesses of the movie is the happy ending, I would have loved a darker ending, leaving something to think about, especially since there obviously is the problematic climax involved in the movie, there are some good side stories, especially the dramatic with John and Holly's marriage. Strangely that works out perfectly and we get to know everything about it, even though the movie actually doesn't spend much time explaining, it's just done so well and perfectly direct that we basically know everything about these two when the movie ends.
I am not sure if this was a final breakthrough for Bruce Willis, but he definetely shows in this movie what great actor he is, we see a lot of different sides of him, the tough guy, the soft guy, and even better, the funny guy. I hardly ever lÃ¡ugh in movies, and I hate unserious movies that are trying to hard to make you laugh, but the jokes in this movie are perfect, especially the one signed by Bruce Willis, I loved his attitude, perfect performance!
To sum it all up a bit, as we always do. This is a really great action classic, an unforgettable movie that never gets old, no matter how many times you watch it, this must be like the 5th time for me, and it's still highly entertaining, it has no slow moments and just moves out there at a perfect pace for 2 hours. The weak sides is perhaps that it's such a classic and traditional action movie that we know the end before the movie starts, sadly, an ending that would have left me breathless would have been better for me, but maybe other people think differently. I just like dark endings.
8/10