Bruce Willis does well as John McClane, a New York cop who recently separated from his wife because of her desire to pursue a job opportunity in Los Angeles. McClane travels to L.A. to visit her over the Christmas holiday. He arrives at her office party in a fancy high rise building, when "terrorists" break in and take the lot hostage.
John manages to escape, and then wages war on the hostage takers, thwarting their plans and picking them off one by one. Almost the entire movies takes place inside the sky scraper or immediately outside of it.
My favorite character in the movie is Hans Gruber, the leader of the bad guys. The actor who plays him, Alan Rickman, is also one of my favorites. I enjoy watching Rickman's performances as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies.
Die Hard has a plausible story line, moments of great humor, and is stylistically directed by John McTiernan. It is interesting that McTiernan often has the bad guys speaking in a foreign language, but no translation is provided. Also, he deliberately allowed light flares on the camera lens in some scenes to stay in the final version of the movie. "Ode to Joy" by Beethoven plays at various points throughout the film, and the "joy" of this adventure is an important theme.
Two key features of this film make it superior to other action movies. First is the character development of the antagonists such as Hans Gruber (the leader of the bad guys) and his main strong arm, Karl (played by the late Alexander Godunov).
We get to know Hans pretty well. He is highly intelligent, and it is important to him that others understand that he is highly intelligent and cultured.
Karl is a competent, efficient killer who goes on a maniacal rampage when he learns that McClane has killed his brother.
The other important feature is that the bad guys are not in fact, terrorists.
The movie audience is led to believe they are in one of my favorite scenes when the party-goers inside the high rise are first taken hostage. As machine guns are fired into the air and people scream, Hans calms the crowd.
I love, Rickman's slow, polished, deliberate delivery of Gruber's lines as chaos is all around him. He holds a book and acts as if he reads from it:
"Ladies and gentlemen... Ladies and gentlemen... due to the
Nakatomi Corporation's legacy of
greed around the globe, it is about
to be taught a lesson in real power.
You will be witnesses."
He closes the book.
But the bad guys are thieves, not terrorists. If they had in fact been terrorists with a political agenda, the "joy" theme in the movie would not work. Instead, they are after money, to which everyone can relate. The audience can feel all right about liking some qualities of the bad guys, at laughing at them or with them during the humorous parts of the movie.
Another one of my favorite lines from Hans is when McClane's wife, Holly (played by Bonnie Bedalia), who is also a hostage, discovers that the bad guys are not terrorists.
HOLLY
(to Hans, scornfully)
After all your posturing, all your
speeches...you're nothing but a common
thief.
Hans lunges at her.
HANS
I'm an exceptional thief, Mrs. McClane.
And now that I'm moving up to kidnapping,
you should be more polite.
Die Hard is a movie where one can see the effort that the director, the actors, the set designers, the special effects coordinators, and everyone put into making it successful as a work of art.
Their efforts paid off. I can't speak for the sequels, but the original Die Hard is a great movie.
