Iconic action classic

Rating: 7/10 (16 June 2019)

Is there anyone out there who hasn't seen Die Hard? It's an American staple in the universally loved genre of action movies, so unless you really don't like them, you've probably seen it. I'll tell you a secret: I fell asleep the first time I watched it. Thanks to the magical DVD player and the boxed set of Die Hard DVDs my dad bought, there've been ample opportunities to rectify my mistake and watch the movie again.
In this Bruce Willis classic, action, tense drama, comedic one-liners, and Christmas are all mixed together to make a winning combination. Walking barefoot on broken glass might not be the type of scene you want to watch him in during the holidays, but Die Hard has been added to many people's Christmas movie traditions. He plays the iconic policeman John McLane-with an iconic catchphrase that isn't appropriate to write out or say in front of children-who, on Christmas Eve, winds up fighting the scary Alan Rickman, a German terrorist who takes a building full of people hostage, instead of reconciling with his wife, which was his original plan for the evening.
Sometimes the old action flicks wind up becoming cheesy over time. While I'm not one to call 1988 an ancient time, this movie has had time to settle, and even among the young, impatient audiences of today, it's still enjoyed and entertaining. When James Shigeta says, "You'll just have to kill me," he's not saying anything new; hostages have always whimpered to villains that they don't have the needed information, and the villains always shrug and let them live. In Die Hard, Alan Rickman shrugs and follows James's suggestion. It's iconic, funny, terrible, and makes Alan both a wonderful and frightening villain. Get ready to start quoting both the hero and the villain, and you're guaranteed to have a "yippe ki-yay" of a good time.