Review: “Die Hard”

Die Hard (1988) is an action film. It stars Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Alexander Godunov, and Bonnie Bedelia. It was directed by John McTiernan, produced by Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver and the screenplay was written by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza.

The movie starts with John McClane (Bruce Willis) arriving in Los Angeles to go to see his estranged wife and children. His wife is at the Christmas party at the Nakatomi skyscraper. While there, a group of terrorists led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) take over the skyscraper. McClane – a cop – winds up having to try and stop them while trying to convince the authorities to come.

It is rather violent and quite a bit of blood is shown, though there are a few times that the camera focuses on something (or someone) else when someone is getting shot or killed. There is also frequent swearing and quite a lot of use of the ‘f’ word. Other then those two things, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I really loved how McClane talks to himself and I also like how McClane quite a lot of the time doesn’t know what to do, has to make it up as he goes, and think his way out of situation – whenever he isn’t using a machine gun to get out of one, anyway.

I love the sense of humour. Alan Rickman was terrific and still has a slight humorous air about him when he’s doing some of the scenes. Willis did a great job, as did everybody else. Rickman’s facial expressions were awesome – especially in the scene where he and McClane meet up for the first time. Though, I discovered shortly before I started doing this post that that scene where they meet was not rehearsed before hand for a spontaneous feel to it, so some of Rickman’s expressions could have been genuine or partially genuine reactions to stuff Willis said.

I personally don’t view it as a Christmas movie, but that’s me. And it really doesn’t matter, actually.

This movie has action, humour, romance, violence, some gore, tension, suspense, near-misses and the one man up against incredible odds. What more could you ask for?

My Rating: 10/10.