The great-grandaddy of action films.

Rating: Null/10 (18 January 1999)

This is it. That film. The film that spawned a thousand rip-offs, carbon copies and look-a-likes. There are few films that have created their own genre. Star Wars is the space western, Psycho introduced the slasher and Jaws personifies the 'creature feature.' Every cliche and familiar shot found in their distant relatives can usually be traced back to these founders. But Die Hard created something more. Die Hard didn't just create the action genre. It didn't just give us the one-man-takes-on-impossible-odds scenario. It didn't just give birth to the ordinary guy in the extra-ordinary situation plotline. It introduced a dozen other sequences that are now deemed stock film fillers due to their now over-use. It also totally restructured the Hollywood ideas about feature-length entertainment and made a movie star out of the then unknown Bruce Willis. That, and it was, is and always will be one of the top three action films ever made.
If this seems a little too much like over-adoring, fanboy pap then you're damned right. It is. But few films deserve this much adulation. The film itself is top notch quality entertainment. From McClanes landing at the airport to his drive off into the sunset with Holly at his arm there are enough brilliant scenes, snappy lines and tense sequences to make lesser action films pale into comparison. John McTiernan was a relative unknown coming onto this as well. Yes he'd made Predator and a good film it was too but it loooked cheap and wasn't anything more than a sci-fi version of the silent-stalker horror films that were being churned out by the bucket-full at the time. McTiernan shows his talent in abudance with claustraphobic camerawork evoking the labyrintine tower to perfection and some action pieces that have yet to be bettered by anybody (McClanes slo-mo jump of the roof of the tower is a nomination for best action moment in film history.) The villainous terrorists/robbers are suitably menacing as well with Rickman superb as their ruthless head. But the star of Die Hard is Willis. McClane is the type of hero the cinema crowds had been calling for. One that feels pain but won't be beaten. The kind that deliver a suitable wisecrack just before dropping another evil terrorist. If he wasn't a cop then he'd be another guy like anybody else. For the first time the public had someone to relate to.
But Die Hard was not only vitally important for being an exceptional movie but also for what it led to. Pick any action thriller and you can trace it back to Die Hard. Pick some non-action thriller movies and it will be there too. This was the first film to switch the roles, make the good guy the loner and give the bad guys strength in numbers. It's often copied but rarely duplicated. Only recently with films like Face/Off and The Rock has Hollywood come close to catching that old magic. The sequels couldn't do it and many will come and go before another successor to the throne is found. Until then Die Hard remains what it always has been. Not just a classic. Not just a masterpiece. It is THE action film. The rest simply lay in its wake. Yippee-Kiyay indeed.