Week 10: Die Hard
Directed by John McTiernan, 1988
131 minutes
22nd November, Tuesday. The Study, Teviot.
Possibly the ultimate ‘anti-Christmas’ movie, Die Hard is a wonderful present that bundles action, thrill and humour.
New York cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) arrives in LA on Christmas Eve to visit his wife who recently accepted the vice-president position of a multinational corporation and before going to say hi to the kids, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) asks him to stop by the office party that is currently going on in Nakatomi Plaza.
As soon as McClane gets there and takes off his shoes (something to do with travelling) terrorists take over the building, securing the entrance, the elevators and bringing a halting stop to the party we are introduced to the excellently named Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman). He wants access to the bank vault and when it is not given to him, he holds everyone hostage until he can break into it. Luckily for McClane, he is not amongst the hostages and manages to get to a safe place to try and formulate a plan to alert the authorities and save the hostages, especially his wife. Unluckily, he did not have time to put his shoes back on.
Willis moulds himself into a quick-thinking, smart-talking hero that has no time to think of the consequences and goes for everything full throttle. Balancing the scales we have Rickman who lends the film the ultimate villain quality – creating a character we all love to hate. At times he is manic but always completely focused on his goal even going as far as taking things into his own hands when McClane begins to frustrate him.
Completely enjoyable, never a let down, Die Hard is an action classic that you can enjoy every year. Even compared to today’s standards, it does not get much better than this.
Written by Raymah Tariq