One of the Greatest Raw Action Movies Ever Made

Rating: 10/10 (15 June 2017)

"Die Hard" is arguably one of the best action films in its genre of alltime.
It is a movie that stays with you long after you have finished watching it. The characters played by Bruce Willis (John McClane), Bonnie Bedelia (Holly Gennaro McClane), Alan Rickman (Hans Gruber), James Shigeta (Joseph Yoshinoba Takagi), and Reginald VelJohnson (Sgt. Al Powell) are all unforgettable characters that you feel you know intimately after viewing this film.
The plot of the movie revolves around John McClane saving a building full of hostages, along with a more personal motive of saving his estranged wife who is among the hostages. John McClane is New York cop who travels to the West Coast to join his wife and children for the Christmas Holiday. He goes to her place of employment and while he is there, the building is taken over by German terrorist. John is able to slip through the cracks and not be detected by the terrorists. He is then able to spend the rest of the evening killing the terrorists one by one until he finally reaches the leader Hans Gruber in the ending climax. John McClane saves the hostages and his wife in the end.
Like the Indiana Jones movies, Die Hard takes intense action and mixes it with a bit of humor to appease different aspects of the movie watching experience. The director and editors did an amazing job with their use of angles and filming to create scenes that give a feeling of enormity and suspense. One example of this is a scene on the roof of Nakatomi Plaza when John McClane is trying to get the hostages to abandon the roof for the safety of lower floors, because he knows the roof is wired with explosives. The angle is taken from above and a little to the left of the overall scene. In the scene you are able to view the hostages, John McClane, and the FBI closing in with their helicopters.
Another example is when John McClane reacts to Hans Gruber killing the character of Harry Ellis. McClane takes explosives attached to a rolling chair with a computer monitor on top and drops it down an elevator shaft causing an enormous explosion.The angle used for this scene pans out to include the whole Nakatomi Plaza along with part of the police force. The enormity of the scene is felt through the editing and angle of filming.
"Die Hard" takes the theme of good vs. evil and packs it into a highly raw action film that uses regular people to accomplish the impossible. It takes an everyday average New York Cop and turns him into one of the biggest heroes in the action movie genre.