The greatest action movie ever made!

Rating: 10/10 (30 January 2006)

At the end of the 80's, that were all about shirtless muscle bound supermen taking on hundreds of foreign terrorists single-handed, Die Hard came out and changed the course of the action genre, whilst still having a shirtless and muscular (although not in Arnold or Dolph standards) hero, taking on a group of foreign terrorists single-handed. Die Hard though features a hero who is markedly more human and real than his rival action hero's. McClane is an ordinary guy and he damn near gets killed in this film and gets the hell beaten out of him, He takes a pummelling the likes of which Schwarzengger never received in the 80;s. He got a scratch at most.
So what makes Die Hard the single greatest action movie ever, and I'm talking action movie with an action hero and plenty of action, a proper lads movie. This is easily the best. The basic premise is basic. Terrorists take over a building and Bruce Willis in the right place at the right time (or wrong?) is on hand to stop them. Yet the film has a brilliant script. This is chock full of witty writing (The two agent Johnson's, the idiotic police chief, the slimy co-worker Ellis), set-ups and pay-offs and great little touches. Die Hard also features some scenes that are hilarious. It's just funny and combined with the direction of John McTiernan, this is a thrill ride start to finish and unsurpassed in its combination of action and humour.
Furthermore Willis is superb and also it must be noted can act, and is allowed to. It can be argued that Arnold, Jean Claude, Steven and Dolph are not great thespians, and it'd be a well granted argument. Doing the simple stuff is not a problem, but stretching the acting muscles reveals that those muscles are not nearly as defined as the bicep, tricep and whatever-cep, muscles! Then there is Sly Stallone who can act given the chance, yet aside from First Blood his action movies don't allow him for more than 6 lines of dialogue or much in the way of stretching. Willis however rejuvenates the action hero character by giving him personality, following on from Mel Gibson's Riggs (Lethal Weapon), the year before. He has personality, he speaks and he emotes. He's not cool as ice, he is a real guy in an extraordinary situation. Willis delivers a great performance here, one of the best in an action man movie, because he's human, and charismatic. Similarly the rest of the cast are great. Generally a lot of action movies aren't too concerned with the co-stars acting talents, because the leads aren't much kop, but Die Hard loads the film with good actors, everyone delivering. This makes for a more exciting movie when the actors are so convincingly real. Alan Rickman is superbly slimy and cool as Hans Gruber, the super slick German terrorist whose icy demeanour is only ever pierced by the annoying and troublesome McClaine. Then we have number 1, baddest bad guy henchman ever, the big blond fella Karl played by Alexander Gudonov. Not forgetting Bonnie Bedelia, Reg VelJohnson, Paul Gleason, Robert Davi and Grant Bush.
McTiernan is one of the masters of crafting an action scene. Sadly when recounting his work, he hasn't hit the bull's-eye on enough of his movies, yet in Die Hard and Predator he emerged as one of the action king directors of the decade, along with Jim Cameron, Walter Hill and Richard Donner to name a few. The action here is superb and not forgetting in a setting that could have caused problems creating enough varied and well choreographed action scenes. Above all this has scale, it's big. it's the equivalent of the big bloated blockbusters of today that rise past 150 million dollars in cost, yet lack the skill of this film.
Die Hard features quality in all departments from the cast, the crew to the superb score from Michael Kamen, and thus far no other action film comes close to this ones entertainment and repeatability. *****