No shoes, no socks, no shirt, no surrender...

Rating: Null/10 (1 December 2000)

A barefoot, bare-chested Bruce Willis breaks the laws of gravity, the odds against good guys vs. Eurotrash terrorists, and Arnold's body count for a single film at that time, in the action movie that set the blueprint for everything that followed it, but rarely ever equaled it, (of course nowadays THE MATRIX took care of all that.)
When hard-bitten New York cop John McClain (Willis) flies to L.A. for the holidays to visit estranged wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), about the only thing on his mind was not fighting with her for Christmas. He never dreamed in a million years he'd end up fighting for his life, which is exactly what happens.
Caught off-guard post-argument with Holly, and pre-completion of an after-flight freshening-up session, (the phrase "making fists with your toes" was made for trivia heaven!), he becomes every screenwriter's dream of the perfect action hero: an ordinary guy caught in extraordinary circumstances with the ability to rise to the occasion. When Nakatomi Plaza (actually Fox's Century City offices) is taken over by "terrorists," McClain forgets marital woes and declares martial law in a one-man war against the armed intruders.
Big, belligerent and boisterous, this was the action thriller at its most Hollywood-outlandish, but one of the main things going for it is what most thrillers that followed came up missing: characters we care about. Willis' McClain is a wiseacre hard-ass with a smart-mouthed crack for even the diciest situation, (honed by his years on MOONLIGHTING), but unlike AH-nuld, he is no Superman, and even as we laugh at the Wiley Coyote scrapes he gets himself into, we wince simultaneously at every-near miss, be it flying bullets or free-falls through umpteen story windows, and cheer each time his pluck and determination to get the bad guys and save his missus, brings him through.
John McTiernan, who made his career with this film, (and was deathly afraid of heights while shooting it!) doesn't waste a single opportunity given him by the script to turn all the action set pieces up "to ELEVEN!" Michael Kamen's Sturm-und-Drang scoring does some nifty things with Christmas carols and Beethoven's "Ode To Joy" that were so original, everyone's been ripping off the score ever since, (including Kamen himself!)
Best of all, though, is the note-perfect casting job. Besides Willis, British stage vet Alan Rickman oozed oily charm, unctuous ambition and tons of bad attitude as lead "terrorist" Hans Gruber, who matched Bruce for every thrust and parry in their scenes together, both physically and verbally. Best of all, it's easy to see in the scenes that he carries without Willis, that Rickman is an actor with a future of memorable characters ahead of him, villainous and otherwise, (see him at his best in ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES.)
Bruce was the one who initially suggested that John McClain have a wife, and that she be played by Bonnie Bedelia. Smart move on Joel Silver's part that he took that advice, because as the "damsel-in-distress," Bonnie comes across about as helpless as Bette Davis! The screen crackles with the chemistry between her and Willis as they argue like a husband and wife at odds, trying to find their way back to common ground. And even when face to face with the baddies, she makes it clear that she's got bigger brass cojones than all of them combined.
As for the rest of the supporting cast, their characters have become archetypical staples in the action genre by now: Reginald VelJohnson's Sgt. Al Powell, John's one-man cheering section on the outside; Paul Gleason as the inept cop-in-charge who'd like to shoot McClain as much as he would the terrorists; Robert Davi and Grand L. Bush as the F.B.I. hotshots; William Atherton as the snide, sniveling, career-driven reporter he played so well, he'd be back in the sequel; James Shigeta as Holly's noble and doomed boss Joe Takagi; Hart Bochner as the hop-headed hostage and all-around jerk who thinks he can 'cut a deal' with Gruber; Devoreaux White and Clarence Gilyard Jr. as Argyle, McClain's driver, and a nerdy high-tech terrorist, respectively, and then on the bad guy's team, the late and still great Alexander Godunov, Lorenzo Caccialanza, and Al Leong as a greedy gunslinger with a sweet tooth.
At a time when action-starved fans were moaning that they didn't make 'em 'like they used to,' DIE HARD came along and proved them right. They didn't...now they were making 'em BETTER than that.
I cannot believe there is one movie lover on Earth who hasn't seen this at least once, so if you haven't, save yourself the rental bills you'll run up from repeated viewings, for God's sake, and just BUY it! It will become a permanent part of your library, I promise you. YIPPEE-KI-AY....