Our Review
Despite a tag line that makes it seem like it is a sequel to a Disney movie, Die Hard is pure classic action movie. It has all the classic elements of one guy taking on the world with nothing but a hard gun and cigarettes to make him look cool, many explosions preferably in a large building, and gunfight after gunfight.
Action movies are really about getting to the action, and that is what the film does. John McClane (Bruce Willis), a New York cop, arrives in Los Angeles to see his wife at a Christmas party at the same time as a crack team of all star terrorists arrive with fully automatic weapons to borrow a few hundred million from the company vault.
Willis gives a great performance though this only has such a great effect when combined with the writing and John McTieran the director, producing a sense of realism even in an all shoot ‘em up action movie. James Bond movies are great but the guy knows what to do in every single situation – it’s just not like that in real life.
Though many consider it hard to spin out a two and a half hour movie in the same location, that’s what action movies are all about. Die Hard doesn’t fail to impress with each gunfight having a different twist from McClane walking on glass to throwing a stick of C4 tied to a chair down an elevator shaft.
The movie also gets in some nice little happy ending clichés such as Al, the cop, finally being able to raise his gun again to shoot the terrorist guy who is about to shoot McClane, and the limo driving side kick playing some small part and arriving at the end with the oversized smile like Cat out of Red Dwarf.
Surprisingly for an action movie, it even has some quite entertaining dialog. As one of the terrorist points out that McClane should have killed him when he had the chance, McClane is shooting up through the table while he reloads his gun. Die Hard is a simple, straight forward, classic action movie.
Chris Worfolk
In a Nutshell
"Die Hard is a simple, straight forward, classic action movie"
Rating
Movie was rated 80 out of 100
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