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Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #29: Die Hard

This year I have been going all over the place with this Greatest Movies List, sometimes reviewing the next movie on the list, sometimes reviewing one I saw a few weeks ago. Since I am playing fast and loose with the rules, and since this is the Holiday season, why not skip down the list to what is arguably one of the all time greatest Christmas movies, Die Hard (1988)? Some people like to spend the Christmas season watching an angel get its wings, some like to watch a millionaire learn the meaning of Christmas, I like to watch Alan Rickman read the words “Now I have a machine gun. Ho. Ho. Ho.”  

After five movies I think even the most die-hard fans (wink) would agree this franchise has gone on for too long, but the first three movies are some of the best action movies of the 80s and 90s. I actually watched them out of order, starting with the second one, followed by the third and eventually making it to the one that started it all at Nakatomi Plaza on Christmas Eve. Watching those movies as a teenager really left an impression since this was when I first started to watch violence onscreen. When you see Bruce Willis kill a guy by sticking an icicle through his eye socket, you are going to remember it. Fortunately I realize that real-life violence is horrible and movie-violence, in my opinion, is fun to watch.

It is especially fun when that violence is juxtaposed with the Christmas season, a time that on paper is supposed to mean peace on Earth and good will towards men. However if you are a master criminal with a perfect plan, this is the time of the year to invade an office party at a Los Angeles high-rise, keep the party-goers hostage with your crew of European mercenaries and keep the police at bay with a rocket launcher. This brings us to Hans Gruber, one of the best movie villains of all time, perfectly played by Alan Rickman in his first major Hollywood role. Gruber reads Time magazine, is multilingual, and buys his suits from a store rumoured to tailor to Yasser Arafat. He is so cool at times you almost wish he would succeed with his plan.

He is also a merciless killer, as we see him early on kill a company executive who refuses to give him a code he needs to access the building’s vault. While eating a plate from the Christmas buffet Gruber calmly tells the hostages the executive brought this on himself and will not be joining them for the rest of his life. This is the moment when his perfect plan begins to unravel as an elevator opens its door to reveal one of his men dead inside, wearing a red tuque and covered in Christmas lights. The message written on his sweater seems to imply a psychotic Santa Clause killed him, but instead of a chimney the killer is hiding in the elevator shaft above and is taking notes on the reaction his gift is causing amongst the hostage takers.

That killer is of course John McClane, played by Bruce Willis in the role that also made him a Hollywood star. As the franchise went on McClane became somewhat of an invincible action hero who can jump out through a window with barely a scratch, but in this first movie he is an ordinary New York City cop trying to reconnect with his family for Christmas and stuck in a very bad situation. Gruber and his guys arrived while he was trying to get back with his estranged wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) and he ran to safety with no shoes, almost no shirt and only his service revolver. However if you are going to call your movie Die Hard your protagonist better be very hard to kill, and McClane does prove to be a major thorn in Gruber’s backside during the entire Christmas Eve.
This story structure in which one man undermines the plans of terrorists/criminals/revolutionaries who take over a structure was new at the time the movie came out, but it proved to be so popular it has spawned not only four sequels, but plenty of copycats as well. So far I have seen a Die Hard type story set at an oilrig, two at the White House, one aboard Air Force One, and even one set a rock concert. Some of those are pretty good, but you just can’t beat the original. The action sequences directed by John McTiernan in Die Hard are pure popcorn sequences, from the fight between McClane and the near un-killable terrorist Karl (Alexander Godunov), to McClane repelling off the roof of the building as it explodes and shooting his way back in.


As to whether or not this violent action movie is in fact a Christmas movie, well it takes place during Christmas Eve does it not? Furthermore, it is the story of a man trying to make it home for the Holidays, one hostage-taker quotes the poem A Visit from St. Nicholas, and when Gruber finally gets the vault open he looks like a kid who has opened the world’s most beautiful present. Plus for some people this time of the year can be so stressful, between work, the weather, and the shopping, that it can feel as though it really is a life or death situation. Call me crazy, but just like Jake Peralta on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, my Christmas tradition to deal with that stress is to kick back, relax, and watch John McClane ruin Hans Gruber’s Christmas plans in Die Hard.

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