Not perfect, but far better than anything Schwarzenneger could muster

Rating: 8/10 (19 September 2001)

With the exception of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, DIE HARD ranks as perhaps the single best action movie of the 1980s. This 1988 suspense thriller is not, in my opinion, a perfect film; but in light of all the morally rotten Schwarzenneger/Stallone shoot-'em-ups that we had been exposed to, and continue to be exposed to, it is as close to one in the testosterone action genre as there has ever been.
Bruce Willis ascended to stardom as New York cop John McClane, out on Christmas sabbatical in Los Angeles to see his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia), who now works in the forty-story Nakatomi Plaza in the Century City district. The two obviously are at odds, but both have agreed to try to reconcile following an office party on the 30th floor.
But all bets are off once a group of heavily-armed terrorists, led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), seize the building and hold everyone at the party, including Bedelia, hostage while they try to break open the company's computerized vault and its bounty of bearer bonds worth $600 million. Willis, however, has eluded capture; and soon, he begins his own one-man campaign to wittle down the terrorists' numbers not so much through bullets as with his own brains.
DIE HARD has two flaws that I think keep it from being an all-out masterpiece. One is that the LAPD captain in charge (Paul Gleason) acts totally idiotic, which is not anywhere close to being realistic. Another is that the two FBI agents who take over the operation are so crazy that they make even the most unbalanced terrorist (Alexander Godunov) seem relatively sane. It slows the plot down just enough to be irritating.
That said, however, these slow points are at least righted by solid performances from Willis and Bedelia, as well as Reginald VelJohnson's fine perfomance as the Twinkie-eating cop Al Powell, who has a sympathetic ear to Willis' plight over the radio. Rickman's performance is one of the best villain roles ever conceived in Hollywood history. Loosely borrowing elements from such films as THE TOWERING INFERNO and BLACK SUNDAY, director John McTiernan boosts up the suspense extremely well, even though some of the violence and profanity are a bit much. Michael Kamen's pulse-pounding orchestral score is fairly unusual for an action film, but very welcome, as is the uncredited (though not by the Internet Movie Database) of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Not an unflawed film, but certainly superior to almost everything of its ilk before it, DIE HARD is extremely worthy as an action film of tremendous energy and skill.