Bruce Willis in the best film of his career!

Rating: 9/10 (29 January 2010)

Die Hard is one of those 80's movies that, as the title suggests, doesn't die. It still holds up today as one of the best action thrillers ever.
Bruce Willis has probably never been better than here, his first and best outing as New York cop John McClane. Willis seems to have a hunger to prove himself here, something he far too often doesn't exude. This was his first real big budget attempt to break into the big league and he succeeded. His John McClane is a moody, sarcastic quick witted tough guy, but more importantly he's a regular Joe, he's no muscle bound Arnie Clone dispatching bad guys with ease, quite the opposite, every kill comes with blood and sweat, taking the steam out of our hero on numerous occasions, and at one point, he comes close to tears. This kind of vulnerability is what makes John McClane so likable. He's really up against it, one man against at least a dozen terrorists led by the excellent Alan Rickman.
Alan Rickman also excels in what is still one of the best bad guy roles. He plays Hans Gruber as a suit wearing classic music loving ego maniac, who will do anything to get what he wants, but always remaining gentleman like, rarely cussing and rarely losing his cool, even when faced with McClane. It's a smart, classy portrayal and he makes for a great villain in contrast to Willis wisecracking New Yorker.
The rest of the cast are also great, even the smaller roles seem authentic and real, from construction workers, to swat team members, to FBI agents to news men. Rarely does an action film feel this way. Too often smaller characters are just their to fill out the story and say their lines but here they feel like they really are in this situation and this is one of the reasons Die Hard is so good, everyone is on their game. Standouts include McClanes wife Holly, who remains a hostage throughout, Ellis, the coke snorting obnoxious yuppie who is likewise a hostage and feels he can negotiate with the terrorists, and Al, the nice guy patrol cop on the outside who communicates and bonds with McClane from the outside via walkie talkie. A mention also has to go out to the terrorists themselves. Each one has their own identity, each one their own ticks,they argue with each other, they debate with each other and most of all they just want to kill McClane.
The action by todays standards might seem poor if your more interested in CGI overload, but back in the 80's CGI was barely existent, and instead if something needed blown up, it was blown up, and in my opinion, this way is much much better. This film is down and dirty explosive and bloody. When McClane gets into numerous hand to hand fights they feel real and messy, like a fight ought to be, not choreographed into an inch of their life like a Van Damme film for example, these fights are raw, head butts, check, bashing heads on pipes, check, shooting a guy on the balls, check, it's all done so well and unflashy and only adds to the realism. Unlike so many other films of this kind, this one feels like the events could happen, nothing here is so far fetched, unlike the inferior sequels.
What is also so great about Die Hard is the claustrophobia. The events of Die Hard take place in one very tall building in central LA. McClane is limited to where he can hide and manoeuvre, he climbs down lift shafts, crawls through ventilation shafts, watches outside police activity through the window and at one point jumps spectacularly off the exploding roof and into a window via a fire hose pipe.
The script is one of the best I've seen in a mainstream action film. Classic lines and scenes are here aplenty. You'll be quoting from this film for years to come.
Die Hard is a strong contender for best action thriller ever. Unfortunately the sequels have gotten worse and worse and the recent Die Hard 4.0 is the nadir of the franchise so far. Everything that's so great about the original was only partly present in Die Hard 2 but even that failed to capture the magic of the first.
So forget the sequels for now and if you haven't seen this, and frankly there's not a lot of you out there, go see this now. Yipeekaye.