DIE HARD (1988) Retrospective / Review

you know my name but who are you just another American who saw too many movies as a child another culture this is John Wayne there's always kind of harsh little Roy Rogers actually it's okay I'm a comic so are you ladies about here about the past six months meaning you still live in New York noise ask as many questions are gone well we'll see what Santa and mommy can do okay so if it doesn't work out man you got a place to stay now find a place [Music] looking for a lot of genera then you must become McClane just wanted to start using miss Gennaro so Japanese company they figure it's gonna want a married woman Holly you're married to me we did this [Music] we're in [Music] [Music] gentlemen we are in charge [Music] come the [ __ ] down here and the police [Music] only John can drive somebody that crazy do you really think you have a chance against us mr. cowboy hey Roy how you feeling pretty [ __ ] unappreciated out [Music] the 20th of July in 1988 diehard hit the big screen in the USA and was a huge hit it didn't arrive in the UK till 7 months later in early February of 1989 produced for 28 million dollars it managed to rake in 141 million worldwide directed by John McTiernan who had success a year before with Predator directs Bruce Willis in his career defining role the success of this movie kick-started a franchise which over the years spawned four sequels the film also introduced us to the late Alan Rickman who blew audiences away with his performance making him one of the most popular villains of cinema die hard is now considered one of the best action films of the 80s its formula has been covered a number of times such as the examples of under siege and sudden death and of course it's a firm favorite for Christmas viewing just recently Bruce Willis declared it wasn't a Christmas film this may be his honest opinion or just saying it to wind people up in 1988 the reviews were mixed Roger Ebert gave it two stars and felt the Deputy Police Officer ruined the movie saying the character is so willfully useless so dumb so much a product of the idiot plot syndrome that all by himself he successfully undermines the last half of the movie The Washington Post felt the movie manipulated its audience and a script is a monument to illogic the critics felt it was a yell participation movie with a few laughs along the way now opinions on the film shifted quickly into the positive and many of the elements that weren't addressed at the time have been highly praised and his level of filmmaking and storytelling has been given the respect it deserves in 1968 20th Century Fox produced the successful film the detective starring Frank Sinatra the film was based on the book by Roderick Thorp he wrote a sequel in 1979 called nothing lasts forever taking inspiration from the film the towering inferno the story was about Sinatra's character a New York police detective called Joe Leland visiting the 40-story office headquarters of the claxton Oil Corporation in LA on Christmas Eve where his daughter Stephanie Gennaro works while he is waiting for his daughter's Christmas party to end a group of German terrorists take over the skyscraper this video had wanted to adapt the book for the big screen but as Sinatra was contracted to appear in the sequel he had to be offered the part but being in his early 70s he turned the part down which is what they had hoped there were rumors floating around for years that diehard was a repurposed script for the intended sequel to commando but that was not true he could find interviews with Stephen E de Souza explaining what he wrote for the sequel and it's false connection to die hard with Sinatra no longer involved it gave them the opportunity to change the characters and remove the connection to the detective with Joel Silver producing here to work with director John McTiernan the year before on predator and wanted him to direct it but John didn't really like the early drafts of the script and turned the offer down multiple times he revealed in the commentary to the movie that he took some persuasion to direct it he felt the script was too mean and he wanted to lighten it up and add some humor he didn't want forced humor but make it a tad more joyful so he didn't hate the villains when they were on camera you would end up enjoying their scenes McTiernan didn't want the villains to be terrorists either considering that direction too nasty for a summer movie he chose to avoid the terrorists politics in favor of making them thieves in pursuit of monetary gain believing it would make the film more suitable for popcorn entertainment for the cast we have Bruce Willis as John McClane Willis was largely known for his comedic role as detective David Addison on the television series moonlighting and the studio did not believe at first in his action star appeal the script was initially offered to a variety of popular stars including Sylvester Stallone Harrison Ford Don Johnson Richard Gere and even Clint Eastwood but they all turned it down Bruce saw the opportunity and took the part and ended up getting paid five million dollars to star in the film a figure virtually unheard of at the time for an actor who had starred in only two moderately successful films and came from TV once onboard McTiernan and willis decided to change the count of John McClane to a person who did not like himself very much but was doing the best he could in a bad situation thus the captor became more sympathetic and made him more of an everyday man who the audience could relate to the late Alan Rickman place hands Gruber this would be Alan's first feature film role Alan had a wealth of experience of acting in theater and came to the attention of the producers who had seen him perform on stage hands Gruber is a German mastermind and the leader of the professional thieves posing as terrorists Bonnie Bedelia plays Holly Gennaro McClane John's estranged wife who moved to LA to start a new career Bonnie had worked in TV movies for years since the early 70s and will recently starred in the long-running series Parenthood she did return for die hard to Aleksandr Goodenough who sadly passed away at the young age of 45 plays Carl hams main henchman Alexander was also known for his performance in the House and Ford film witness Reginald veljohnson plays sergeant al Powell is revealed power works in the office of the police station after taking himself off the street after accidentally shooting the child who he believed had a gun and has struggled to live with this mistake his captor returns for die hard to but only for a brief cameo the late Paul Gleason placed Dewayne T Robinson the deputy chief of police who turns up at the siege and makes a mess of the operation thinking he knows what he is doing Paul his probably most fondly remembered for his performance as he headmaster in the Breakfast Club der Rohe white plays are Goyle John's a limousine driver he wakes around for John in the plaza car park and is unaware the chaos that unfolds dev'reaux had a staggered acting career he made his first film appearance in The Blues Brothers the same year of die hard he also starred in action Jackson William Atherton plays Richard Thornberg an arrogant reporter who will do anything to get a story and the attention he's so craves he returned for die hard too but was most famous for his role in ghostbusters Hart Buckner plays you traditional a he's yuppie Harry Ellis as lazy Nakatomi executive heart was the son of famous actor Lloyd Buckner who had starred in the detective Hart moved into directing but did continue acting on and off he first came to my attention as the love interest into super girl the movie the late James she geta plays Joseph takagi reiko Tommy's head executive James had been acting since the late 50s and starred in dozens of popular TV shows and finally we have Robert Davi and grand L Bush appearing as FBI Special Agents big and little Johnson as a kid I loved seeing Robert in Goonies and he was a brilliant villain in license to kill grand L Bush also popped up in license to kill and that yeh had a role in lethal weapon too but he would always be bore up to me from Steve flight of the movie filming began in early November of 1987 and finished in March of 1988 the corporate headquarters of 20th Century Fox the Fox Plaza in Century City serves as the film's setting for both external and internal scenes at the time of filming the building was still under construction and a setting for a scene of McClane exploring an unfinished floor complete with construction equipment was real the building became so iconic due to the film that security over the years had to clamp down on people posing outside it to take photos the end helicopter scene took six months of preparation and the production was given only two hours in which to film it it took them three attempts above Fox Plaza to get what they needed the script went through many changes during the shooting process and at one point they didn't know how to end it the shooting script did not originally include the meeting between McClane and Gruber pretending to be a hostage it was only written in when it was discovered that Rickman could perform an American accent drama Tynan later on thought differently on his accent and felt it should have been dubbed over me personally I don't think it's Allen's finest accent the film opens with New York detective John McClane arriving in LA on Christmas Eve to attend a party intending to reconcile with his estranged wife Holly meeting her at her employers had office the Nakatomi corporation limousine driver our goal drops off McClane at the party Argyle decides to wait around for John if they catch up with his wife turns sour John meets with his wife and she is happy to see him but sooner fiction's between them begin to start Holly leaves to make a speech and John gets cleaned up for the party at the entrance T security guard is taken out and the building is put into lockdown the elevator on the floor of the party opens and professional thief hands Gruber and his team take control John hears gunfire and quickly slips away avoiding detection as everyone is held hostage Gruber is looking for Takagi who he discovers in the crowd and takes into his office and interrogate him for the code to the building's vault he plans to steal six hundred and forty million dollars in bearer bonds using terrorism merely as a distraction McClane is secretly following Gruber in Takagi watching them from a distance takagi refuses to cooperate and is killed by Gruber John needs to alert the authorities and sets off a fire alarm so Gruber sends one of his henchmen to investigate he and John face often get into a brawl resulting in the henchmen having his neck broken John takes his weapon and radio using it to contact the LAPD sergeant al Powell is sent to investigate as he is the only cop nearby McClane sends Gruber's man down the elevator alerting the group that he now has a machine gun so Gruber sends henrik and marco to stop McClane they both failed to do so paola ricin finds nothing unusual Powell repairs to leave but McClane attempts to get pals attention and drops one of the dead bodies on his patrol car Powell panics and some of the LAPD who quickly turned off and lay siege to the building McClane is now stuck with dealing with Gruber and his team and the police outside not willing to help him and fail to appreciate his efforts with only Powell on his side the visual effects for diehard were handled by Richard edlund's company boss film this company was set up a few years earlier after he left George Lucas's FX company Industrial Light & Magic boss films first big projects were Ghostbusters and 2010 which garnered them Academy Award nominations and proved there was strong competitor to ILM the effects in die hard really come into play during the attack on the police outside the plaza the explosion of the c4 by McClane the big finale ester roof explodes and the death of Gruber the explosions were enhanced optically with additional explosions and smoke effects and a false perspective miniature for example for the elevator shaft as the c-4 strapped to a chair is dropped down to take out the floors below the most memorable effect is the film's dramatic climax the explosion of the roof of the Nakatomi building boss again composited various shots of explosions with a mix of miniatures pyrotechnics and high-speed photography for Hans Gruber's slow-motion plummet from the tower Rickman perform a stunt himself and dropped 40 feet the shot used was the first take Rickman was dropped sooner than he had been told he would be so the look of fear on his face is genuine this was all done before digital compositing and done the old-fashioned way shot on 65 millimeter film so the resolution is very high and you lose less detail when optically printing all the elements for the final shot die-hard exhibits some of the best optical work before everything went digital come the 90s [Music] well a composer Michael Kaman provides a score to die hard Michael who sadly passed away 2003 was a popular choice of composer during the 80s and on into the 90s Beethoven's Ninth Symphony most commonly known as ode to joy' he's featured prominently in Michael Caymans score throughout the film the director incorporated these things into the film's soundtrack as a homage to Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and in keeping the sense of joy he wanted added to the movie and the music does complement that Kaman would often use somatic variations on well-known pieces of classical music he did a similar thing in Terry Gilliam's Brazil the score did come under extensive editing with music samples looped over and over and queues added to scenes for example cue some other scenes were reused again and adjusted to fit the rhythm of the Edit changing a lot of what came and originally wrote for a specific scene this is not uncommon and happens a lot with film music as he director once changes made at the last minute claimers work for die hard 2 & 3 came on to far less adjusting and most of his material remained intact and how he intended it as a film as a Christmas setting the score also features sleigh bells in some of the cues as well as a Christmas song winter wonderland in 1987 rap song Christmas and Hollies performed by Run DMC was used near the beginning and the end credits of the film begin with the Christmas song let it snow diehard does include to temporary tracks of music by other composers these pieces may have been put in during the rough cut to create a temp track our decision was made to include them because k-mers material didn't quite work for the studio and director these pieces of music I heard near the end when MacLaine and Powell see each other for the first time this is taken from John Scott's score for the 1987 film man on fire and for the surprise return of Karl at the end and we see him get shot by Powell this piece of music is from James Horner's aliens I'm a big fan of Michael Caine's work and I own a bunch of his scores and die hard is certainly up there as one of his most memorable once you hear those themes you know instantly it's from die hard came and had a great skill at mixing classical pieces of music with his own style effortlessly my favorite piece is easily the rooftop scene as the music builds up to this inevitable explosion with McClain jumping for his life and the more emotional moments when he tells Powell the mistakes he's made with his relationship with his I think as a soundtrack to listen to by itself it often doesn't make my playlist because that's an album it doesn't quite work as well a school is designed primarily for a movie first then as an album it's a second option I think he's scores to say Highlander and Robin Hood Prince of Thieves a strong contenders for easy listening and work really well independently from the film the film never received a soundtrack released at the time on LP and CD it's unclear why it didn't have one maybe a result of not having a new song attached to it or the lack of a market for it at the time it was until 2002 that it finally got released and was limited to 3,000 copies these will grab straight away and it sold out fast fans who missed out had to wait till 2011 for another print run but yet again copies were grabbed quickly but thankfully last year they re-released it again and it's still available to purchase at [Music] diehard arrived at a time when video games based on movies were starting to become very common especially if you owned a 8-bit microcomputer a number of games were released at the time for the commodore 64 pc engine ms-dos and the most common title for the Nintendo Entertainment System the Commodore 64 version has some nice graphics for the time considering the computers limitations the controls take some getting used to however with way too many commands to pick up and access items the floors of the plaza end up turning into a maze of rooms as you navigate your way through them it stays very faithful to the movie as you have to collect items to complete certain missions like you can't go in the air-duct without your lighter and you need to pick up certain items to make a bomb you only get one life so if you die you go back to the beginning of the game with so many hit and miss movie game tie-ins this one is surprisingly good for the old Commodore the ms-dos version is an early attempt at a third-person action game very primitive by today's standards but very ambitious for the time published by Activision and developed by Dynamix it received strong reviews when it came out no idea why to be honest this is the first time I've come across this version the game is pretty tough and has a terrible combat system making for a frustrating experience if you get your head around the combat and how it plays you may get some enjoyment out of it but it certainly wasn't my cup of tea the NES game lightly c64 title is a surprisingly faithful game to the movie following the plot closely it has dedicated cutscenes you can hear radio chatter from Hans Gruber and even the glass can hurt your feet like in the film there are 40 terrorists scattered throughout the building and John McClane's task is to clear each floor of terrorists of flaws 31 to 35 from the beginning McClane is only a pistol and the use of these fists to dispose of the bad guys but you can acquire several different weapons later on the game is pretty tough as a top-down view of how you play it makes it difficult to aim your gun and judging the distance the bullets travel the play has about four minutes before each of the six locks are opened in the vault but can gain more time by destroying the main computer on the fourth floor once all the locks have been unlocked the vault is now open and the game's final battle is triggered the player has only a few minutes to get to the third his floor for a final battle with Carl hands and any of the remaining terrorists with many modern reviews look upon it now quite unfavorably I think the game is generally quite good there was also game for the PC engine only released in Japan exhibiting nice colorful graphics and big's price playing like commando which is not a banner thing is clay just has the die-hard license and they sought to run a few sections to make it resemble the movie as there is barely any connection to it it has you running around a forest and a river that wasn't in the film a typical lazy switcheroo with an already developed game and just rebadged it with a die hard title in 1996 we got a game for the PlayStation Saturn and PC from probe entertainment called die hard trilogy combining three different games into one alien trilogy also developed by probe proved successful as a formula to combine three movies into one game but die hard makes great attempts to give you three different experiences instead of having all three mash together now I've discussed this game before in my review of die hard with a vengeance and more recently it was featured in my top 10 video games based on movies list covered by slopes game room personally I enjoyed the game based on the first movie the other two games were perfectly fine but I found myself being drawn back to the first one today certainly a clunky game and not very easy on the eyes but the gameplay is solid and a lot of fun and for the most part captures the spirit of the movie very well the smite taking a few liberties here and there is a tad repetitive as well but good fun in short bursts it doesn't feel like a full game so to speak it's certainly not a mini game but it's clear it's been limited to fit on the disc with the other two titles still impressive though having three full games on one CD here's an odd one for you on the Sega Saturn originally called dynamite Dekker in arcades which paid homage to die hard Sega decided to pay for the license to call it die hard arcade for territories outside of Japan the game arrived in 1997 for Sega's console he plays a cop who bears a close resemblance to McLain and he is joined by female cop who were tasked with saving the president's daughter from a group of terrorists on a building very similar to Nakatomi Plaza is a brilliant Streets of Rage style game I loved it back in the day when I had my Saturn it's not too long and super big to play mode it has little connection to the movie but certainly worth picking up if your intellect okay mning and finally in 2002 we had diehard Nakatomi Plaza arriving on the PC published by Sierra entertainment a first-person shooter that of course follows the movie but expands to plot to throw in additional missions the game is see very mixed reviews when it came out if you're a big fan the movie may get some fun out of it but it's a pretty ugly game and doesn't really provide anything new to the genre it's just a standard first-person shooter with a die hard lick of paint if I would recommend any of them I would say the NES game and die hard arcade despite its loose connection is a lot of fun to play when die hard first came out I was of course too young to see it in cinemas or even rent it to be honest I don't ever recall seeing it coming out in theaters never saw any adverts and it was only till it was on VHS and TV during the Christmas period that it came to my attention in the early nineties diehard wasn't really a movie my friends and I talked much about it never seemed to be on our radar I think it was only the release of the sequels that the movie suddenly became this action movie you had to watch and of course having Sky satellite and the movie channels was a blessing being able to watch these movies without having to get your parents to rent them for you diehard bought us another side to the action hero one that was vulnerable and showed us his weaknesses Arnold and sly both seemed to overcome the odds without little pressure sure Rambo got tortured but it didn't really seem to bother him afterwards he didn't really show much sign of wear and tear or battle with John McClane he is in good shape but does get badly beaten up and his foot cut up by glass and by the end he is a total mess as he faces up against hams Gruber this was a major change of direction for the action hero in most movies they would often take on an entire army of men by themselves and come out with just a flesh wound it made the genre unrealistic too many critics despite the level of enjoyment being high it made many people laugh at how silly the genre was becoming die hard make great attempts to bring it back to a sense of reality and have the hero be a normal person who has to face this difficult task by himself but ultimately makes mistakes along the way to save the day McClane is a character that doesn't really like himself he is short-tempered and says the wrong thing as he lets his emotions get the better of him despite these shortcomings he's a very good-natured person at heart and is dedicated to his job he wants to help people and do the right thing but his personal life and relationship with his wife is a challenge for him to maintain demonstrating he's too dedicated to his job this made the character John McClane quite relatable to many people I do really miss the days when Bruce Willis was happy to be acting and was really giving his all to a part diehard was of course early on and his first big feature so he had something to prove to the world Bruce is at his best when he is being a smartass and the capture of McClane fits so well with his person see he was known for comedy and then jumping into action was a big step which to his credit showed he could do it and it changed his career from there nan and he starred in dozens of action films alan rickman for his first feature film role he knocked it out of the park his performance is so controlled and often theatrical when needed certainly not as over-the-top as his performance in Robin Hood as the Sheriff of Nottingham but his delivery of his lines were so encapsulating he's role as Gruber just stuck in your memory the decision to make him a professional thief rather than a terrorist I think was the right move despite him being the bad guy he is not truly heartless he shows sympathy for the hostages and won't just kill people for the sake of it this makes him somewhat a likeable character and you're not really enjoying the scenes when he is on camera making him the best villain of the Die Hard series I think for many actors who came on board for the sequels must have felt a huge pressure to live up to Rickman's performance diehard is now a firm favourite for Christmas viewing is setting it's use of music and the hero MacLean joining his wife for the festive season these are easy comparisons to make in saying it's a christmas film now I don't personally think is a Christmas film in a traditional sense Fox didn't seem to think so as it was released in the summer and after Christmas in other countries in early 1989 Shane Black often sets these movies at Christmas but people don't often jump to say they are Christmas movies I find the whole discussion on if it's a Christmas film or not kind of redundant I personally watched The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy every Christmas these certainly aren't festive movies for the season but an L part of my yearly viewing so whatever film gets you in the festive spirit it's all good in my book the premise of the film and how its executed is brilliant for a movie with many script rewrites and dialogue being changed often on the day of shooting the film should be a mess but it's not it's far from it the production was lucky to have talented filmmakers at a point in their career where they probably didn't realize how good they were with improvising many scenes on the spot in attempts to fix the script with its many last-minute changes it could have been a total disaster John McTiernan and cameraman Yann DuPont who later went on to be a successful director in his own right der a superb job of capturing the geography of the building helping the audience taking what's on each floor and how everything fits around the locations giving you a great sense of what's going on John uses traditional techniques to set up each scene which is a trick many modern filmmakers seem to forget about it's always too tried and tested tricks of the trade that help tell a story visually the overall look of the movie has this warm mix of oranges and reds and once night falls has metallic blues of the building coming to play it's a movie that is wonderfully painted with light and is so slick in its presentation I think 90% of the film is bang-on solid and is pretty flawless but I do have similar issues Roger Ebert raised with the film not as Extreme as his but the cops who turn up to deal with Gruber and his men are portrayed as incompetent fools it does dilute his overall Corti somewhat the movie strikes for the most part a serious tone with some comedic flourishes but it becomes borderline a comedy and frustrating when the cops and the FBI are displayed for total dicks you could have the FBI being overly confident Falls but the majority of the police assisting excluding prowl are so unhelpful and aggressive towards McClane it's like they failed to listen to what's going on and feel they can easily handle the situation but at the end costing people their lives the film does have a nice layer of cheese at the end when John and Powell meet for the first time face to face and when Powell redeems himself by shooting Carl but I suppose in keeping with the Christmas spirit Christmas movies always need a good layer of cheddar to make you smile or put you in a good mood John's wife Holly sadly I think is kind of wasted bonnie is a talented actor but doesn't have much time to shine she gets her moments to show her independent nature when arguing with her husband and show him she can stand up to hams Gruber but she spends her majority of the movie just sitting down with nothing to do in die hard - yes again she spends the entire movie sitting on a plane this is not really a major issue but I think more could have been done to include more of his wife and show that she could have also helped McClane in some way die hard demonstrated how talented Bruce Willis was as a leading man and further reinforced that director John McTiernan was a great action director with a strong skill set and a great knowledge of how to tell a story visually diehard is still a strong contender to be one the best action films of the 80s and has a strong following to this day as it's now 30 years old with all the sequels the first movie is still considered the best now the franchise with die hard with a vengeance coming close for me as a personal favorite the film has stood the test of time and is extremely rewatchable the film is a combination of great talents early on in their career coming together to deliver a solid action film for the summer and they succeeded on all fronts [Music] well if that's the best way we have figured is we've got maybe 30 or 35 hostages up there probably on the 30th floor and maybe I don't know seven or eight terrorists something there sounds like an eight seven scenario thank you we'll handle it from here when we come and do your men will try and let you know what about John McClane he's the reason why we have the information we have up until now he's also the reason why you faced him seven terrorists instead of twelve he's inside wizzy well he might be a cop I don't know we're checking on that one of yours no no way now go pal you got a minute I'm here John I want you to do something for me um I want you to find my wife don't ask me how by then you'll know how I want you to tell her something I want you to tell her that I thought it took me a while to figure out what a jack-up but um that souther that uh that she is the best thing that ever happened to a bum like me [Music] she's army saying I love you at the housing times she never only say I'm sorry after all your posturing all your little speeches you're nothing but a common c-section see mrs. mcclain and since I'm moving up to kidnapping you should be more polite [Music] Oh John come in did you get that some of that a double-cross [Music] I like this [Music] get down oof [Music] if you missed out on our Kickstarter to help fund my first feature-length documentary in search of the last action heroes don't worry all our fantastic and exclusive rewards are now available on IndieGoGo in demand you can find a link below

Channel: Oliver Harper

Views: 162,672

Rating: 4.94592 out of 5

Keywords: die hard review, die hard 1988, john mctiernan, die hard trailer, alan rickman, hans gruber, die hard movie review, bruce willis, action movie, die hard, movie review, retrospective review, oliver harper retrospective, ollie harper, oliver harper, last action heroes, 80s action, 30th anniversary, die hard 30

Id: Su5jtuU0Tvo

Length: 32min 36sec (1956 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 19 2018