To Die or to Die Hard

Rating: 10/10 (11 July 2000)

A poster - it advertises using a picture of a 40-Storey high building with the roof blowing off like hell on earth, a distort helicopter flying by and a very disturbed and angry face in Black and White stares deeply at you. Basically, things look bad, very bad, for real life. But for an action movie and an action movie fan things couldn't be better in heaven. To put the icing on the cake, the poster is accompanied by the words, `One cop, twelve terrorists, the odds are against John McClane, that's just the way he likes it' and another tag line reads `Suspense, excitement and adventure on every level'. How on earth can you dismiss all this? You can't.
The film in question is none other than, the Oscar-nominated for Visual and Sound Effects - Die Hard'. A film like no other before, exploded onto our big screens breaking all the rules leading the way as a blockbuster action thriller that literally set new standards for it's genre.
The plot as it goes has Bruce Willis as a New York cop, John McClane, who is invited by his wife to the wrong party at the right time, (or the wrong time as the case may be). He becomes the unexpected obstacle to an ingenious plot led by criminal mastermind Hans Gruber, played by the excellent British actor, Alan Rickman, who takes control of the high rise Nakatomi Plaza building hostage. Can Willis outwit the terrorists one by one and maybe ask them the question `Do you wanna Die Hard?' and save the day?
Directed by John McTiernan (Predator, The Hunt for Red October) and photographed by Jan De Bont (Speed, Twister), produced by the Lawrence Gordon-Joel Silver collaboration (Lethal Weapon), you have the prefect crew for a prefect film.
Die Hard' has been hailed as one of the best action movies of all-time, by critics and audiences around the world. Many even tried to copy it, some succeeded, others failed, but all Nicknamed Die Hard...' Passenger 57' - DH on a plane, Cliffhanger' - DH on a mountain, (directed by Renny Harlin ,the man behind the Die Hard sequel) Under Siege' - DH on a ship (apparently the original script for DH 3), Speed' - DH on a bus (as mentioned earlier, directed by the cinema-photographer of Die Hard').
Die Hard' created it's own level of excitement and adventure, a whole new sub-genre in itself, where the action genre became one thing, and the Die Hard sub-genre became another item, a phenomenon. Action became an inferior mood for the 1960's to the early 1980's generation and Die Hard' became a more superior form of entertainment for the 1990's.
It was once said in the Empire Magazine' in 1995 for Die Hard with a Vengeance', that if Speed' broke all the rules of the highway code, then Die Hard with a Vengeance' re-wrote the highway code. The same could be said here, if The Towering Inferno' fought the flames, then Die Hard' defined fire and explosions.
Die Hard' is an exultant interpretation of the action movies, where the knife-cutting tension builds, very witty where the kick-ass lines are ones you could die for . The only thing is, if you're gonna die just pray it's not at the hands of John McClane, otherwise, it's `Yippee Kai-yay M.F.'