Die Hard: My Favourite Action Thriller of All Time
Who cares if it’s a Christmas film?
FanFare founder Eric Pierce recently published this amusing article claiming Die Hard isn’t a Christmas film. Paul Combs contributed this entertaining rebuttal. Now the world (or at least, one or two people in our writers group) looks to me to see where the third wheel in our unholy writing trinity stands on this earth-shatteringly important issue.
My position? I consider Die Hard my favourite action thriller (not adventure film, as that’s a different genre and a discussion for another time). It is also, by any objective metric, one of the greatest action thrillers of all time, arguably the greatest. This fact is constantly swamped by the annual lunatic debate on whether it is a Christmas film. For the record, I think it is, but couldn’t really give a Nakatomi Plaza either way. As far as the experience of watching the film is concerned, it simply doesn’t matter.
Die Hard cast a hugely influential shadow over much that followed in the genre. Die Hard on a Bus (Speed), Die Hard on a Plane (Passenger 57), Die Hard on a Mountain (Cliffhanger), Die Hard on a Battleship (Under Siege)… None of these would exist without John McTiernan’s peerless classic.
As for being a Christmas film, that status remained unbestowed for some decades. For a start, the film was released in the summer of 1988 in the US, and in early 1989 in the UK. I remember seeing a TV spot, thinking it looked thrilling, but being disappointed that I wouldn’t see it, as it had an 18 certificate (similar to an R in the US). I couldn’t pass for 18 in early 1989, alas.
A youth group leader at the church I attended, who knew of my interest in cinema, went to see it and raved about it, claiming it was the best film he’d ever seen. I knew that was hyperbole, but it made me want to see the film even more. Later in the year, when the film came out on VHS, that same youth group leader invited me to stay a little later after church youth group on a Friday night, as he’d rented Die Hard. The youth group met at the home of some mutual friends, including a girl in my year at school who wasn’t allowed to stay up and watch the film, whereas I was. That must have been a tad humiliating for her, considering she was a few months older than me (my parents were a lot more liberal by that point, and pretty much allowed me to view whatever I pleased).
At any rate, I loved the film. Bruce Willis wasn’t a big star at that point, so had a plausible vulnerability as John McClane. Amid all his boy scout heroics, unlike Schwarzenegger, you got the impression he really could go under at any minute. For the uninitiated (and seriously, is there anyone left who hasn’t seen Die Hard?), McClane battles Alan Rickman’s gang of terrorist thieves, who have taken hostages, including McClane’s estranged wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), in an LA high-rise building.
Rickman’s Hans Gruber is a memorably menacing villain, and his gang aren’t your average thugs from an episode of The A-Team. They are, as McClane puts it, “well financed and very slick”. They have an exceptionally clever plan, and it ought to have gone off without a hitch, were it not for McClane’s fly in the ointment. He plays an edge-of-the-seat game of cat and mouse with Gruber, amid the locked down building. For over two hours, the claustrophobic suspense holds, in thrilling set piece after thrilling set piece.
At first the police don’t believe McClane when he tries to contact them (the hair-clutching “Do I sound like I’m ordering a pizza?” scene remains a hilarious highlight). Once they realise he’s not kidding, they prove more a hindrance than help. The media are equally useless, as are the FBI agents (the ludicrously named Johnson and Johnson). Only a normally deskbound patrol cop (Reginald VelJohnson, armed with suitably tragic backstory) proves of use, bonding with McClane over the radio, as the stakes get higher and higher.
I remember what most struck me about Die Hard when I first saw it was constantly thinking it couldn’t get any more exciting, only for it to do just that. It builds beautifully, with stand-offs, pursuits, fist fights, rocket launchers, bombs, explosions, and gunfire galore. The helicopter gunship finale literally blows the roof off, leaving the audience breathless. And of course, McClane does the whole thing in bare feet, at one point running across broken glass to escape the bad guys. Ouch!
I’m pleased to say I later got the chance to see Die Hard at the cinema — twice in fact — in a gorgeous 70mm rerelease. These days, it is on almost every Christmas at our local multiplex, and yes, it is now very much associated with the Christmas season. But for me, regardless of the setting, and the debate about whether that alone means it constitutes a Christmas film, Die Hard is a landmark in the genre, and for my money the best action thriller of them all.
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