A genre-defining movie with a hero to beat all heros...

Rating: 8/10 (20 September 2010)

Die Hard (1988)
A fast, well paced, formula movie partly because it helped define the formula. The bad guys are really bad, the good guy (one of them, Bruce Willis) is really good. We love to hate the criminals even though we have to respect their corps-d'esprit and their professionalism. And we sure love to love the hero, who defines the American hero so well even the villain recognizes it.
Is it believable? What a silly question. Why would we want that? This is an action fantasy where all is well in the end, not counting a good number of corpses. But these are mostly comic book corpses, in the sense that it's all just a game of types and of characters. Only Willis, playing a New York cop, has a fully fleshed out character (the chief villain has a large but still mostly two dimensional role).
The acting? First rate. The action? First rate. The set alone, this big new style skyscraper not quite finished, was a simple stroke of brilliance. Lots of glass to shatter, lots of explosives to detonate. A few sentimental moments as we go seem cheesy but are sort of necessary to make the movie the type of fantasy it is. When there's a little surprise at the end, and even the L.A cop is able to draw his gun, we almost are relieved the movie left no possibility behind. Likewise, when Bruce leaps down the shaft and grabs onto a bit of slippery metal with his fingertips and pulls himself into a little slot, we think, no way, and of course, go for it.
So, it's not a masterpiece in some larger sense of significance. But it's about as good as an entertaining Hollywood movie gets in the mold. Even twenty years later.