The best Christmas movie ever

Rating: 10/10 (13 June 2004)

I saw 'Die Hard' in the cinema when it first came out (which dates me, I know), and just watched it on DVD for probably the first time since. What surprised me was the fact that it hardly felt dated at all: the biggest giveaway that it was an 80s movie was the use of a Japanese corporation as the site of the terrorist attack.
This movie is certainly Bruce Willis' finest hour, and Alan Rickman's performance as the villain is brilliant too. But what really makes it for me, in this era where action heroes like the Matrix mob and Lara Croft are totally invincible and, therefore, ultimately boring, is that Bruce Willis is most definitely, well, vincible. He's far from fashionably dressed, spending most of the movie in his vest with no shoes, rather than run into a room with six terrorists with machineguns and shoot them all in glorious, balletic slow motion he... valiantly runs away, he's cut and bruised and while he leaves trails of blood around the building, more often that not they're his own. Bruce Willis plays an action hero who can get hurt and regularly does: quite amazing by 21st century standards. And, better yet, he's not doing all this to save the world, but so he can have a quiet Christmas with his wife and kids!
Overall it's a whole lot of fun, with explosions, shootouts, a bunch of surprises, no dull spots, few unbelievable plot twists, good characters and a neat ending. After watching the movie it was interesting to imagine some of the other action heroes of the time trying to play Wills' role... what a screwup it would have been to have cast someone like Arnie or Stallone instead.