In The Spirit of Christmas, I Finally Watched Die Hard

To be straightforward, I enjoyed this movie far more than I thought I would.

I've found that the more and more movies I watch, the less and less I enjoy all the things I used to when I watched movies growing up. Today, I'd rather watch something that challenges me in deeply uncomfortable ways than I would something I can turn my brain off to because, if I'm being honest with you, I can never turn the critical part of my brain off anymore when I'm watching a movie. This is why a lot of the middle-of-the-road action films I used to love that consistently get two thumbs up from audiences all over the globe just often end up turning me off and making me want to go watch Oppenheimer again. The more movies you watch like a syndicated critic and think about like a syndicated critic, the more you care about the objective quality of a movie. And so I can't really say that Bruce Willis's Die Hard was the biggest priority on my watchlist because I have a lot of newer and upcoming titles on there that I'm a little anxious to review as if my review thread was actually popular. But dear reader, I quit media piracy recently, so now my options are less numerous than before, and this movie is one that was free on Tubi. Besides, it's Christmas, and the thought occurred to me while watching this movie that maybe I would make it a tradition to watch Die Hard during the holiday season every year, because even if I don't think of Bruce Willis's hazardous, high-rise happenstance as a hardboiled Christmas movie even after I finished it, it certainly had more references to the holiday than I expected it to, and I do understand why some would want to consider it a Christmas movie or, you know, just find another excuse to watch Bruce Willis fight terrorists on a skyscraper instead of a full-grown Will Ferrell scream excitedly for his dad like a child. Now, Die Hard is definitely a well-made movie, and the overall construction is solid. However, it does have some frustrating shortcomings that weigh it down from accomplishing more - elaborations on which are coming soon, but first, I have to get something out of the way.

Welcome to the party, pal. There, it's out of the way now.

Die Hard, a 1988 action movie based on Roderick Thorp's 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever, follows off-duty cop John McClane as he tries to rescue a group of hostages - his estranged wife Holly among them - when the villainous Hans Gruber and a group of appropriately European pre-9/11 terrorists take over a New York City skyscraper.

So, Die Hard does a lot of things very well, but its opening moments are not among those things. The first fifteen or so minutes of the movie kick us off to a very aimless and meandering start, and I noticed that the movie just cycled and recycled relatively relevant information to try and fill up some space without really going anywhere of value. It was a surprising, disappointing, and somewhat annoying start for a movie as widely loved as Die Hard, but luckily, the movie eventually made good on the promises of dads everywhere and showed me why it's so widely loved in the first place. Its centerpiece setting in the form of the Nakatomi Plaza Skyscraper is very intelligent and made for a big playground of sorts with endless possibilities for John and the caucasian crooks to shoot at each other in ways that would make an Iowa Republican say they don't make movies like this anymore, son. In addition, this movie uses a countdown to when Hans and his men will inevitably get what they want, and this keeps the plot moving along at a relatively steady pace. The scene-to-scene tension and action once the film actually decides to get going is impeccable, so even if the beginning too often fulfills the role of irrelevant filler, Die Hard does improve on its premise gradually and vastly with time. Also, can I just say that John McClane is an easy-to-root-for protagonist? Even if his character is pretty static and unchanging, Willis's performance is a wisecracking and fun, if relatively one-dimensional one that makes McClane easy to get behind. On the other side of things, Hans Gruber, portrayed by Alan Rickman, is a memorable, well-acted, and striking villain who has rightfully been well-remembered alongside McClane.

On a narrative level, this film evolves existing situations in intelligent and satisfying ways that, instead of introducing new subplots, make us understand why the existing ones actually matter. This approach arms every new revelation in the movie with a sense of importance because every new revelation owes its existence to everything that happened before. In short, this movie doesn't run off on wild goose chases in search of subplots, and its focus is remarkable. I've said it before and I'll say it again: a simple movie is not necessarily a bad movie, and Die Hard is able to take a simple plot and milk it for all it's worth without getting bogged down in semantics that would have just caused pacing issues. Yeah, it may not be a revolutionary movie, but it's certainly a well-made and relatively by-the-numbers 80s action movie with an intelligently-used setting that more or less perfects the old tricks and, in a lot of ways, sets the standard for those tricks.

Die Hard didn't really surprise me in any way given its reputation, but other than a somewhat ineffective first act, it does its job as a movie really well, effectively developing the story while also entertaining in a thoroughly engrossing fashion. Its skyscraper setting is incredibly intelligent and well-utilized instead of being relegated to the role of a backdrop, and John McClane is a protagonist that's easy to root for, if not the most complex human being of all time. I can see why this film is so widely loved, and I will say that while the critic in me merely approved of this movie, my inner teenager was just going nuts the entire time, ho-ho-ho-ing with glee pretty much the whole way through, and I think I may have a new holiday favorite. Yes, I can see why some call this movie a Christmas movie, and though I personally disagree with a lot of that argument after seeing the film, some aspects of Die Hard are surprisingly festive, and hey, if the holiday season gives me an excuse to watch this movie again, I'm all for it. If you're a homeschooling mom reading this review for reasons I cannot fathom, and you're wondering if your sons would like this movie, I can assure you of this - I can't think of many movies that would entertain them more than this one, but I would tag it with a parental advisory for some pretty consistent uses of strong language, a lot of intense shootouts that do feature a decent bit of R-rated violence and blood, and a touch of nudity in a couple of cases, once when a screaming, topless woman is forced out of a room at gunpoint when the terrorists take over the tower, and again when a poster of a topless woman is briefly seen in the background a few times in an elevator shaft. But that said, the sexual content in this movie isn't very overt compared to a lot of other stuff out there, and the movie never stops to focus on some of the less desirable aspects related to it. But nevertheless, for your own consideration. All in all, I personally loved this movie, and I think you will too, especially if you've got cheesy 80s action movies in your blood. This might be one to watch after the kiddos go to bed if you haven't already seen it because it features some likable characters and a really smart centerpiece in the form of a skyscraper that is used to create consistently unique, exciting, and effective action sequences that never seem to lose steam even as the film progresses into its later acts. I loved this movie, and if you're an 80's kid who likes Guns-N-Roses and Led Zeppelin and dislikes gluten-free diets, you probably will too.

Yipee-ki-yay, dear reader, and Merry Christmas.

Die Hard - 8/10

Proverbs 31:10-12