Cemented the template for contemporary action films

Rating: 10/10 (10 May 2005)

Lots of subtexts have been read into this film over the years--and anyone who has read a few of my reviews knows that I'm no enemy to reading subtexts into films, whether they were intended by the filmmakers or not. Die Hard has also sometimes been taken as one of the most infamous, token examples of "what went wrong with Hollywood". But when we get right down to it, Die Hard is so great simply because it's a tightly constructed, kick-ass action film that barely pauses a moment to let you breathe once it gets rolling. It may not have created the contemporary action template, but it certainly did a lot to cement it. Without Die Hard, we may well have not had films like Speed (1994), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997) or Panic Room (2002).
In Die Hard, Bruce Willis is John McClane, a New York City cop who is heading out to Los Angeles to visit his estranged wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), and their two kids for Christmas. Holly's boss, Joseph Takagi (James Shigeta), has sent a limousine to pick John up at the airport. John stops by Holly's office in a large high-rise, partially to try to figure out where he's going to stay. Holly's coworkers are having a late Christmas Eve party--they're the last ones in the building, and they're 30-something stories up. Suddenly, "terrorists" take control of the building. It seems they have an issue with Holly's employer, the Nakatomi Corporation. John is able to hide and sneak away before they see him, but can one cop take control of 12 highly armed, highly trained "terrorists"?
Director John McTiernan, who was fresh off of his success from 1987's Predator, actually begins the film in a mode that is more akin to light comedy and deliberately paced drama. This helps intensify the contrast that shortly follows, although McTiernan periodically retains humor in the guise of sardonically hammy one-liners, mostly delivered by our hero. This was already becoming something of a cliché by the time Die Hard arrived, largely due to the influence of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the action genre (although many of his best one-liners were still ahead of him). Still, McTiernan's use of this sometimes-loathed device is incredibly effective as it is the only means of providing short respites from the nail-biting suspense and action. And besides, "Yippee-ki-yay mf'er" has to be one of the most memorable and funny--if silly--one-liners of all time.
It's interesting that if you really analyze the plot, a large percentage of the suspense is created by merely maneuvering John and the terrorists around the building. The action scenes are not as frequent as they seem; McTiernan sustains a very high level of intensity through a surprisingly classical approach. The bulk of the film is an extended cat and mouse game, occasionally punctuated with gun violence and less occasionally physical combat. Of course, since the film is set in a skyscraper--the combination of Towering Inferno (1974) thrills and a very contemporary (both in 1988 and now) terrorist plot is a large part of what initially created a buzz--some of the more edge-of-your-seat moments are based on heights.
In this type of action film, one of the most important traits for the lead actor to have is an impressive, plausible "superhero" physical presence. Willis, in his early 30s during filming, was perfect for the role. His slightly frumpy, balding look makes him believable as a New York City cop, but his physique is also in peak form here, while not being so over the top that you expect him to oil up and start flexing. The "terrorists" are appropriately different looking--more suave and sophisticated, as if they could be on the cover of a romance novel if they'd just beef up a bit and put down the machine guns. The other roles, insofar as they're significant (and a number are), are finely played if often campy, as they should be--it helps the audience adjust to the cartoonish fates of most of the support characters who are substantial enough to have an arc.
As for those subtexts, there are a lot of interesting things you can read into the film's structure--foreigners are either bad guys or wildly successful capitalists who perhaps have a touch of "bad guy" in their threat to national sovereignty (this is especially true if we place the film in its historical-cultural context, as paranoia about "Asians buying up America", which has since subsided, was just beginning to loom large at the time). African Americans are limited to roles of moral support for the white male hero--entertainment historian Donald Bogle, who has made numerous studies of African Americans in film, amusingly interpreted the role of Sgt. Al Powell (Reginald VelJohson) as that of "black-buddy-as-mammy nurturer". And even though Holly has an ostensibly important position in the company, we see her as mostly subservient, manipulated or helpless. The other females in the film, to the extent that there are any, are primarily present as "decorations" at best.
But the bigger question is whether any of those sociological issues of race, power, xenophobia and male domination are intended by the film. My guess is that they aren't, even if they're present due to other cultural factors. A big summer action movie in the U.S. needs a big action star, and for whatever reason, those had been primarily white males. The villains also needed to be almost cartoonish and mistakable for terrorists, and in the late 1980s, putting white male Americans as terrorists would have made the film implausible for much of the audience, and other kinds of Americans in the role (white females, blacks, etc.) would have been seen as equally political. McTiernan wasn't trying to make political or sociological statements so much as provide us with an exciting roller-coaster of a film, and that he did with flying colors.