The action movie that defined a generation - and spawned a thousand imitations!

Rating: 9/10 (25 March 2013)

Die Hard is regularly ranked as the greatest of all the 80s action movies, and among the greatest of all time, and even 25 years later, it is not difficult to see why. Die Hard really is action film-making at its best, and began a new type of actioner - the everyman caught in a unique situation - that many films would try to copy; some more successfully than others, but none would ever measure up to the original. That even includes the 4 (and counting) sequels! It would launch the careers of Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman skyward - admittedly on different trajectories - and even become a bizarrely popular choice for a seasonal festive film each December! John McClane (Willis) is a New York cop who has travelled to Los Angeles to reunite with his estranged wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) at a Christmas party in a city skyscraper, when an armed band of villains march in with machine guns and take over, led by Alan Rickman's evil Hans Gruber, holding the partygoers to ransom. McClane must then work his way through the building, picking off the terrorists one by one, fighting a one-man war while the LAPD pontificates impotently on the doorstep.
The recipe is incredibly simple, yet brilliantly effective; the ludicrous situation is tempered by the Regular Joe nature of Willis's character, allowing the audience to identify wholeheartedly with his efforts and motivations, while hissing at the Machiavellian machinations of arch-criminal Gruber. The action itself is replete with some superb and exciting shootouts, spectacular set pieces and a new level of violence not often seen in such a mainstream action film before now - just watch for the scene with the broken glass, and you'll be wincing for weeks! Bruce Willis so perfectly captured the essence of his character, that the image, hair and even name have become synonymous with action heroes for all movies hereafter. The iconic shaved head and dirty white vest perfectly captured the feel of the right man caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it was not just Willis's physique and wardrobe that made John McClane such a hero. His fight scenes are brutally brilliant, and his delivery of both threats and sarcastic one-liners will have audiences punching the air and chuckling in equal measure. His radio exchanges with Rickman's Gruber are superb, and his charming banter with Sgt Al Powell on the outside - also over radio - lend the character an extra warmth that could easily have been missed, which would have made the character slightly less sympathetic.
But every great hero needs a villain, and Alan Rickman produced a performance of a lifetime; one which would lead him to being pigeonholed as a great British 'character actor' - Hollywood code for 'plays great villains!'. Admittedly this would lead him to even further success, most notably as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, and of course Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films, but it was unquestionably this role that set him on the role to a reputation as one of the greatest villainous actors of the twentieth century. His performance is never overstated, and without resorting to scenery-chewing, makes every single line positively drip with threat and menace. But he is also allowed a few light moments of his own in between his shooting of innocent bystanders - darkly comic interplay with the FBI outside in particular. His arrogant dismissive nature of the FBI while reeling off a list of names the group want freed is particularly black - his request for one group that he then mouths to his associate that he 'read about them in Time Magazine' a standout. His ability to produce a villain who is both positively loathsome and yet darkly charismatic makes Die Hard just as much Rickman's film as it does Bruce Willis's. Jeremy Irons' attempt to reproduce this balance in the film's third entry pales in comparison, producing a villain that is fun, but unfortunately occasionally too camp to be truly hissable.
The majority of the other characters are generally rather 2-dimensional, in particular McLane's estranged wife Holly, whose character is unfortunately lacking much in the way of back-story that could have made Willis's mission even more effective, whilst the henchman are as typically anonymous as you might expect from such an actioner. The rest of the attendees at the party are also mostly anonymous, making it difficult for the audience to truly get invested in their fate.
But such quibbles are unquestionably minor next to the brilliance of the whole, and such was the film's success that virtually every action film of its type would thus be labelled as the 'new Die Hard' or the even more derivative 'Die Hard on a plane/train/boat/submarine' (delete as applicable). So to see how films like Die Hard actioners should be done, it can only be Die Hard itself. A true era-defining film, one that even gained numerous name-checks in 'Friends' to demonstrate its iconic nature, that became a perfect template for all subsequent action films to follow.