Director: John McTierman
Genre: Action (Machine guns and explosions.)
The Basics: On Christmas Eve, New York cop John McClane (Willis) travels to Las Angeles to spend the holidays with his estranged family. While attending a party at his wife’s office, a group of terrorists seize control of the office building and hold the partygoers hostage. Armed only with his police issued 9mm, and no help from the outside world (or shoes for that matter) it is up to McClane to thwart the plans of Hans Gruber (Rickman) and his team of terrorists and save innocent lives.
Recommendation: One of the all time great 80's action flicks, this is a good movie to watch anytime, but especially during the holidays while the wife or girlfriend or mother is watching happy Christmas movies on the Halmark channel. The movie is rated R for heavy action, blood, and adult language.
My Take: One of the things I like about the action movies that came out of the eighties is that most of them were for pure entertainment and did not include any kind of social or political commentary. They were just for fun. *Spoiler Alert* The plot of the movie is a pretty simple one. Terrorists take control of a building and hold people captive, and the hero cop fights by himself to take the enemy down. This paves the way for a good amount of machine gun shootouts and explosions, which this movie has plenty of without getting in the way to the greater plot. And even though the plot is simple and the action is plentiful, the writers of the film still pay attention to character development and do a good job of balancing their tier of round, flat, and static characters. I particularly liked the chemistry between McClane and Al Powell (VelJohnson), being two cops dedicated to principle, which they are able to build despite the fact they do not meet face to face until the end of the film. Also, even though they are enemies, McClane and Gruber seem to have a chemistry all their own, which serves to make the main conflict as much a battle of wits as a battle of bullets. I also enjoyed the overall tone of the movie. Like I said, this movie is for fun and not intended to teach any morals about the state of society. The movie has a good amount of humor and faced paced movement to keep the air light, so to speak, but still puts in the right amount of drama to build McClane’s character without making the overall movie to melodramatic. In the 80's, filmmakers were still concerned with finding a cast of actors who could act and not just look good in closeups. So the acting in the movie will not disappoint. Apart from the aforementioned chemistry between characters, the cast overall do a good job in bringing their characters to life. But, seeing as melodrama was not part of this movie, it is hard to point to one performance and say that this actor stands out as truly great. That’s not was this movie was about. To put it another way, no one tries to be the reigning star or upstage anyone else, which I like. Also, since it was the 80's, the filmmakers had to rely on physical special effects rather than generating awesome explosions on a computer. This movie is a good example of what can be done with pyrotechnics, a few strobe lights, and some people who know what they are doing. This movie makes me miss the 80's. They knew how to keep it simple and use story to convey the emotion and tension of the film’s conflict. Sometimes I’m a little afraid that the action genre is going the way of the dodo. For the most part, action movies of the 21st century have been based on comic books, involved the supernatural or science fiction elements, or were based on specific elements such as car chases. Filmmakers today could learn a valuable lesson from this film on how to make an action movie that a lot of people will want to see. And, this is a great movie to watch during the holidays since it is set on Christmas eve.
Statistics
Cast Performance: Good. Both Arnold and Sly Stallone (among others) were considered for the roll of John McClane, but I thought Willis brought an everyman quality to the roll that would have been lost.
Violence: Heavy. Not as bloody as some of the horror movies I’ve reviewed, but the machine guns were a blaring, and the body count was high (22 to be exact.)
Nudity: Very brief: There’s only one shot and you practically have to slow down the dvd to catch it, but when the terrorists round up the hostages, there is a couple getting naughty in an office and her shirt is off.
Ambiance/music: Very good. McTierman does a good job giving the sense of claustrophobia to the movie. I particularly like the music cue at the beginning of the film that sounds like distorted Christmas bells. Nice touch.
Overall rating: 4.75/5 on the Bob Kline scale.
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