Review of Die Hard (1988) by Kai82 — 05 Dec 2021

The other kind of Christmas movie, Bruce Willis / Alan Rickman signature role, a classic and the beginning of a long running franchise. Actually it is based on a book named “Nothing lasts Forever” by Roderick Thorp.

The book however is at least unknown in my country and I was as much surprised about it being a book adaptation as everyone else I asked about. What I read about lead me to the conclusion that they improved the story as the book had a downer ending.

The story follows detective John McClane who travels to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve in hope to reconcile with his wife Holly. She is on a party held by her employer the Nakatomi Corporation in their tower building on their Nakatomi Plaza.

Unbeknownst to them a group of armed men led by Hans Gruber are targeting the vaults of the building. This is the set up for the story. The story itself is well written, intense, thrilling and enjoyable.

I especially like that the villain Hans Gruber is not a moron. He is clever and adapts his plans perfectly to the situation. A very hard to overcome antagonist for John McClane. Also John McClane is not depicted as standard unharmable action hero and this makes the movie more special.

He is neither perfect nor invulnerable or flawless and this was refreshing. I clearly see how this become a cult classic. The actors are the other thing that made the movie so good. Lets start with Bruce Willis as John McClane.

It is his first mayor role in a big movie and became as much his signature role as much as breakthrough (as action star). He fully delivers his role and character. However Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber is even better.

Only a few villains left such an impact. He is routinely high up on top movie villains list of all times. An absolute flawless performances or so close I can not see a difference. These two work well.

The rest of the cast also delivers and I want to praise Reginald VelJohnson, Bonnie Belinda and Alexander Godunov for their roles. Visually the movie is awesome too. Be it the sets, stunts and action scenes.

Everyting is fitting. Also there are many memorable scenes and everyone knows the phrase “Yippee Ki Yay”. The writing and dialogues are also well done for an action movie so I should praise of cause director John McTiernan and the two writers Jeb Staurd and Steven de Souza.

The rest is history. It became a box office success, elevate both Willis and Rickman and became a cult classic atop on a different kind of Christmas movie. Overall this is a must see classic and I think this should be the final sentence in my review.