The only action film to spawn an incorrect mathematical formula

Rating: 9/10 (17 August 2008)

John McClane is a New York cop going through a messy separation with his successful business woman wife whose climb up the corporate ladder has meant she has had to move to LA with their children. Embittered but trying to patch things up officer McClane heads to see her at her company's annual Christmas bash. However a group of terrorists crash the party with a new agenda and John McClane undertakes a lone fight inside and out of the building as both the terrorists and the Cops seem determined to kill him.
This is another one in a series of films I have critiqued that shares a distinction of being one of the best films of the eighties. The characters in this movie are well fleshed out and you believe in the depictions of all of them. John as the world-weary, Bogart-esquire cop with a great line in pithy comebacks, but also great utterly cheesed off dialogue as well, Bonnie Bedalia as the wife in question has little to do but does it well, however in this movie it is Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber who is most memorable in creating a performance of a chilling bad guy, motivated solely by greed and with a plan so fiendish that you just don't spot the twist coming.
The action sequence and the tension cranked up by John McTiernan's superb direction is magnificent and you never feel settled as you watch, always nervously worried whether McClane is gonna make it out of there in one piece and the key scene with the glass is one of the most cringe making in movie history. The use of music, in particular Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is also terrific as it is used as both a rousing piece as undercurrent for certain scenes and joyous celebrations for others.
However, one of the most interesting things about this movie is the way that it has spawned a falsely assessed movie formula. For most lazy critics they seem to think that a hero against the odds equals "Die Hard on ...something" e.g "Under Siege" equals "Die Hard on a boat", "Speed" equals "Die Hard on a Bus" and also "Executive Decision" equals "Die Hard on a plane". All of these assessments however are incorrect as they forget the key thing that makes Die Hard the one off that it is, and that is that in all these films just mentioned the authorities are on the side of the hero, whereas the thing that makes "Die Hard" so tense is that McClane could just as easy get killed by the cops as by the bad guys as they both hate him. In that building, he has few allies and no-one else to turn to. This tension makes "Die Hard" the unique film that it is.
Best action film of all time? I think Raiders probably takes that, but it's certainly a photo finish.