Action movies don't come much better than this

Rating: 9/10 (12 June 2007)

It's been nineteen years since Die Hard was first released, and after three films (with a fourth coming out in a couple of weeks) and countless spoofs or rip-offs, John McClane (Bruce Willis) and his catchphrase ("Yippee-ki-yay, motherf**ker!") have lost none of their charm. Why? Probably because when the first movie showed up in 1988, McClane stood out as a normal guy, as opposed to the various Rambos and Terminators that kept invading the screens. He was an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation (think Jack Bauer's elder brother), and that's what's helped cement his status as one of the most enduring action heroes of all time.
The franchise-opener (and arguably the best of the three) sees Willis' police officer trapped in a huge building (the Nakatomi Towers) where his wife (Bonnie Bedelia) and several other people are being held hostage by German criminal Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his team. The situation looks hopeless, unless someone decides to take down the terrorists one by one. And given the lack of more suitable "heroes", it seems like McClane will have to do it.
The character's popularity is indelibly linked to his vulnerability: unlike Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger, who walked out of their movies with no scratches and a pack of dead bodies behind them, Willis leaves the scene bruised and battered (in one installment, he even gets to say: "It looks so easy in the movies!"), even though the body count remains very high. Another thing that sets him apart from his predecessors is his verbosity: whereas Arnie and Sly killed without as much as whispering, McClane keeps on talking, using quick wit and effective curses to comment on his bad situation. This spawns some of the funniest dialogue ever heard in an action movie, such as when the protagonist offs a bad guy from under a table ("Next time you have a chance to kill someone, don't hesitate" "Thanks for the advice") or tries to contact the police ("Attention, whoever you are. This channel is reserved for emergency calls only..." "No f**king sh*t, lady! Do I sound like I'm ordering a pizza?"), and also provides the opportunity for some unseen hero/villain interaction, as Gruber (played by a spot-on Rickman) fakes an American accent and tries to con McClane, only to realize his opponent is no fool and the two start chatting about their conflicting moral values or views on American culture (Gruber: "This time John Wayne does not walk off into the sunset with Grace Kelly" McClane: "That was Gary Cooper, a**hole!").
Also essential in securing this film's success is the claustrophobic setting: while most films tend to drag their characters from one place to another, Die Hard works because the action takes place in one location for the entire running time (an element that was borrowed from Greek drama), adding plenty to the suspense and creative solutions the leading man has to come up with to survive the day.
Back in the '80s, this film was great because Bruce Willis was the anti-Rambo. Now, in the age of Neo, Spider-Man and Harry Potter, it seems only fitting that cinemas will be graced with the return of John McClane, a normal dude against the superhuman majority. Time to dust off the T-shirt, get a gun and be prepared to pronounce that immortal line once again.