"Yipee-ki-yay M.....F.....!"

Rating: 9/10 (1 March 2015)

Totally outrageous, totally unbelievable and totally over the top - and as Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) would say - 'But who cares'? It's Bruce Willis in a version of saving humanity along the lines of John Wayne, Rambo and Marshal Dillon. Personally, John McClane had me when he said he was partial to Roy Rogers because that's who my favorite TV and movie cowboy was as a kid growing up. I'd bet that someone might say that of Willis some day.
In his own way, John McClane must have had some sort of mystical power because up until the point he started crawling through the transom feeling like a TV dinner, his wife-beater t-shirt was white with some blood spatter. But when he hit the floor again to do battle with the bad guys it suddenly turned brown. So mesmerized was I by this turn of events that I never even noticed when the shirt turned a neat dark forest green later in the picture. I wonder how stuff like that gets by the director?
Say, and how about the FBI sending in a double Johnson to take over the attack at Nakatomi Plaza? I'm sure there's a pretty good punch line in there somewhere but I think I'll just let it go for now.
It's been stated, and rightly so I think, that this film set a new standard for action/adventure flicks with Bruce Willis portraying a new kind of hero. He's smart, thinks on his feet, takes what help he can get, and engages in wise-ass banter to keep the audience fully engaged. All the noise, explosions and crashing glass is merely window dressing to keep the story moving as our hero saves the day. What more can you ask for in a two hour action flick?
You know, if this was a Roy Rogers Western it would probably have a title like "Under California Stars". If I had to guess, I'd say Bruce Willis saw that one when he was a kid.