Drinker's Christmas Crackers - Die Hard

once more we find ourselves in the last month of the year dear viewer the season of celebration good will to all men awkward family dinners and unrealistic new year's resolutions that you absolutely don't intend to keep and because we're now in the build-up to christmas which is objectively superior to halloween by the way i figured i'd make my own little contribution to the festive spirit over the next couple of weeks and focus on christmas themed movies and truly what movie symbolizes the spirit of christmas more than die hard the heartwarming story of a new york cop who travels across the country to reconnect with his estranged wife on christmas eve there's parties and laughter and hilarious mishaps and even a few bad eggs that want to spoil the holiday season but along the way our main character learns a few important truths about himself embraces the welcome holiday the party pal and finally reconnects with his wife just in time to celebrate the big day with his family die hard was quite simply one of the most influential action movies of the 1980s and one of my personal favorites of all time a fast-paced tightly structured superbly written action thriller with perfect casting great performances and some absolutely classic one-liners come on to the coast we get together have a few laughs thanks for the advice all things being equal i'd rather be in philadelphia [ __ ] it was so successful that it spawned a slew of mostly inferior copycat movies in the early 90s about a lone hero trapped in a confined location by a superior force that could best be summed up as die hard on a ship plane mountain island bus train but no matter how many times they tried to rip it off there's just something endlessly rewatchable about this movie and whether you consider it a true christmas film or not one thing you can't deny is that die hard is an absolute blast so yippee kaye [ __ ] because it's time to get this party started grab your mulled wine and submachine gun as we venture together into the world of die hard the movie kicks off with our main man john mcclane landing at lax after a long-haul flight that he can't wait to get off pretty quickly the movie explains that he's a cop from new york although i'm still not entirely sure why he's carrying on a commercial flight you know you're off duty right you don't have to take your gun everywhere anyway whatever the point is that maclean's in la to reconnect with his estranged wife holly who took the kids and moved out there against his wishes six months ago to pursue her career now she's a high-flying executive for the nakatomi corporation she's got her own house and a fancy corner office and she's even using her maiden name now wow how times have changed if this film was made in 2020 he'd probably have taken her name mclean is supposed to meet holly at her office christmas party in the half-finished nakatomi building but pretty quickly old grudgies resurface and the two of them get into a fight but before he can get fired into the soggy canopies and cheap prosecco along comes a grinch to spoil the party this is hans gruber the leader of a well-armed and well-organized terrorist group that sees control of the building and take the party guest hostages including holly luckily mclean manages to hide while the rest of them are rounded up but what to do now now why is this happening what exactly does this man wants i want money what kind of terrorists yeah it turns out he's less of a terrorist and more of a high-tech bank robber he wants the money locked in the corporate vault but it's going to take him time to get in there because it's so well protected so he's using the hostages as cover in case the police get involved being outnumbered and outgunned mclean's left with no choice but to fight a kind of one-man guerilla war against gruber and his men using ingenuity quick thinking and sheer [ __ ] balls to get him through like this scene where he's forced to leap across an elevator shaft to shake his pursuers with only a dodgy weapon harness to stop and fall into his doom yeah [ __ ] that [ __ ] he also has to be careful that gruber doesn't discover his true identity and use his wife as leverage against him speaking of which gruber seems to have most of his men working up in the building's roof planting explosives and detonators clearly there's more to his plan than just cracking the vault but what exactly does he intend to do things quickly escalate when mclean manages to raise the alarm and the lapd get involved and try to storm the police with swat teams in armoured cars yeah that doesn't exactly go well you can see how smart and prepared gruber's men are and how dumb and predictable the police are by comparison consistently underestimating their opponents the situation gets even worse when the fbi show up to take command and the reason for all those explosives in the roof suddenly becomes obvious but somehow mclean manages to pull through and escape every situation he finds himself in and even makes it to gruber just in time for a final showdown here's a tip for you gentlemen if someone starts laughing maniacally when you've supposedly got the drop on them it probably means that you don't anyway gruber gets bored and drops out of the movie and of course there's one last stinger to keep you on your toes before john takes the limo home with his wife to celebrate christmas with the family because i guess police interviews and official debriefings are for chumps you know the thing i really love about this movie is well everything is perfectly paced perfectly cast competently shot and brilliantly staged so you can enjoy the action scenes but also understand what the [ __ ] is actually going on the plot is tight and intelligently written managing to keep track of multiple elements plots and events simultaneously in a way that never gets confusing or tedious and always taking the time to set things up before delivering satisfying payoffs the script also manages to give each of the characters a logical motivation for doing what they're doing as well as setbacks and successes that keep ratcheting up the tension while delivering moments of dry humor that keep things from getting too heavy and dark it's just the perfect balance of every element that makes a film like this tick and honestly i could pretty much spend the rest of this review gushing about how much i love this film so [ __ ] it that's exactly what i'm going to do for a start the characters and casting are absolutely perfect bruce willis was best known for his role in the comedy show moonlighting and while that was great it didn't exactly suggest a career in action movies lay ahead this was an era defined by roided up muscle men like stallone and schwarzenegger striding around shirtless and mowing down waves of cartoon bad guys then along came a balding slightly out of shape middle-aged man to challenge their dominance and boy did he give him a run for their money john mcclane is the very definition of the likeable everyman hero yeah he's smart and resourceful and not above cracking wise at times to ease the tension but he's very much flawed and human he can be injured he can get tired and be outsmarted he spends half the movie running for his life instead of standing his grounds and a lot of the time he's [ __ ] scared of the things he has to do and who can blame him really the scene where he's forced to walk barefoot over broken glass is still painful to watch even now and by the end of the film he's been reduced to a bruised bloodied shell of a man exhausted and hurting and driven by sheer desperation to get to his wife which makes his nemesis all the more interesting by comparison see villains in movies like this tended to be written as a physical rival for the hero so the two of them could have a good old-fashioned throwdown in the finale but hans gruber is the exact opposite of maclean he's elegant sophisticated and intelligent relying on his men to enforce his wishes rather than risking his own neck an educated man who wears expensive suits quotes classical literature and plans for every possible eventuality well except for a new york cop named maclean it's great fun watching the two of them verbally sparring over the radio trading insults and trying to find weaknesses in each other and the scene where gruber executes an arrogant but innocent man who tries to involve himself in a situation he absolutely isn't prepared for gives a great insight into the characters of the two men mclean desperately begging for the man's life knowing it's a waste of time but compelled to try anyway and gruber calmly pulling the trigger without remorse or hesitation he's very much a man for whom people are either resources to be used or obstacles to be removed and of course who else but alan rickman could have played a role like this this was rickman's first major film role and the first in a long line of sneering intellectual villains that would basically define the rest of his career but i'd argue that hans gruber was still some of his best work just as a little side note by the way the look of surprise on his face when he falls out the window at the end was actually real director john mctiernan released his safety harness without warning him because he wanted a genuine reaction when he fell apparently rickman was so pissed off with him that he didn't talk to him for the rest of the day the supporting characters are all great as well and the script is so [ __ ] slick and efficient that most of them are more memorable and better developed than the planks of wood that are laughably called protagonists nowadays whether it's al powell the gun-shy beat cop that becomes a confident to mclean over the radio and ends up redeeming himself in the finale or rookie limo driver argyle who gets trapped in the building's parking garage only to have a heroic moment of his own near the climax or gruber's henchman carl who goes on a revenge trip after mclean accidentally kills his brother threatening to derail gruber's carefully calculated plans or the slimy news reporter who senses a scoop and ends up being first on the scene of a major incident but also puts holly in danger when he seeks out her kids for an exploitative tv interview or the coke addicted yuppie that tries to use his smattering of knowledge about mclean to sell him out and save his own arse only to discover that gruber doesn't take kindly to [ __ ] artists they're all well-rounded and well thought out they all have their own unique payoffs and character arcs and their actions all contribute to push the plot along none of them are wasted and none of them feel out of place and honestly it's just a real pleasure to be reminded of a time when screenwriters actually cared about stuff like this when it was still possible to marry up smart tightly constructed writing and attention to detail with visceral fight scenes and explosive action set pieces even minor things like holly turning over a family photo of her and john after a fight there ends up being a significant plot point late in the movie when gruber finds it or the fact that she chose to use her maiden name causing tension with jon at the start which inadvertently keeps her safe after gruber discovers his real name it all fits together into a smart coherent jigsaw puzzle of a movie that keeps the plot twisting and turning but never feels contrived or dumb pair this kind of top-notch screenwriting with brilliantly staged action scenes from a director hot off the success of predator another action movie that i consider pretty much perfect that still man's used to stay just on the right side of believable and you pretty much got yourself the quintessential action movie a film more memorable and thrilling than any cgi [ __ ] fest i've ever seen that still looks good even by today's standards and can easily hold its own against anything made in the past 20 years a film that truly is for life not just for christmas anyway that's all i've got for today go away now

Channel: The Critical Drinker

Views: 540,750

Keywords: review, Nakatomi, John McClane, Hans Gruber, Holly McClane, action movie

Id: TMI6xwM-WcA

Length: 11min 48sec (708 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020