By Stuart Shikano
The holiday season is well upon us. Every year during this time, people get Christmas trees and put up lights, Starbucks changes their cups, and people debate if Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not. The answer to that is of course yes. And because it’s one of the best movies ever: so, by default, it’s the BEST Christmas movie ever. Die Hard is labeled as an action movie, but what makes Die Hard so much better than your typical action movie?
Well, let’s see.
1. DEPTH OF THE CAST
Die Hard’s cast of characters is a very deep roster, kinda like the 2015 Golden State Warriors or the Wu Tang Clan. There are the stars and then there are a plethora of other competent people contributing just enough to elevate the whole thing. So in Die Hard, we got Bruce Willis as John McClane, Bonnie Bedelia as Holly Gennero-McClane, and Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber. That’s the main three. But, then we’ve got all sorts of supporting characters that add their own unique thing. So, we’ve also got Karl the hard-to-kill top henchman (Alexander Godunov), the competent police officer and Twinkie fanatic Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson), the inept and constantly irritated chief of police (Paul Gleason), the young, likable limo driver Argyle (De’voreaux White), the opportunistic reporter (William Atherton), and the sleazy and way too confident co-worker of Holly’s, Ellis (Hart Bochner).
Then, there are other characters with very little screen time who are still able to get in a very memorable line or moment. Take for instance, the computer/tech guy Theo (Clarence Gilyard, who delivers a very memorable and quotable line, ‘Oh my god, the quarterback is toast’ after Hans and his henchmen take out an armored police car. The FBI guys both named Agent Johnson, which is another funny gag, even add to the movie in their little screen time. The two agents’ arrogance and foolishness make for some comical moments. Then, there’s Uli (Al Leong), a Gruber henchman getting in position during a tense moment, when he succumbs to the temptation of a crunch bar that catches his eye. A little moment like that is one of the things that separates Die Hard from other action movies. To throw in a funny moment like that shows the attention to detail of the movie and the need to get as much as juice as you can get in every scene.
2. HUMOR
The humor in Die Hard is what makes it so re-watchable for me. Some action movies are too serious, too dark, or too high-brow for me to watch over and over again. The fact that there are so many moments and lines in Die Hard that make me laugh is what makes me continue to watch it. A lot of that humor comes from our protagonist, John McClane (Bruce Willis). McClane delivers a lot of funny lines throughout the movie. Even as he fights the terrorists, he’s talking smack to them, and getting in witty lines. That mixture of humor with action and humor in serious situations is the key ingredient to this movie.
Our central character sets the tone for the whole movie. McClane is funny and his interactions with other characters are amusing. So as we follow him around, we observe this repeatedly. We see this from the start of the movie with an advice-giving plane passenger, the Nakatomi Plaza front desk guy, or Argyle the limo driver, McClane seems to always be taking things in stride and smirking his way through these interactions. His chemistry with limo driver, Argyle is great and really kicks off the movie. While the movie was already good in its infancy, when we hear Argyle turn the radio volume louder and correctly tell John McClane, “This is Christmas music,” as we hear Run-DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis” playing, the movie REALLY begins.
The humor coming from John McClane throughout the movie comes both behaviorally and verbally. Early on, McClane’s reactions to events in the terrorist hostage takeover make us laugh because they ring true. When McClane pulls a fire alarm to alert the cops, he thinks he pulled off a brilliant move. McClane is proud of himself and ecstatic until he sees the cops beginning to drive the other way. His profanity-laced response is hilarious because we understand how he’s feeling and probably see ourselves reacting the same way. When McClane kills the first henchman and sends him down an elevator with the caption on his shirt reading, “Now I Have A Machine Gun. Ho-Ho-Ho,” we are able to laugh with McClane and join him in taunting Hans Gruber and the villains, instead of being fearful.
The jokes, the taunts, the smack talk while fighting all spices up the already good action. We have another layer of entertainment and makes it somewhat lighter, in a good way. The humor plays throughout the movie, giving us many quotable lines. Chief among them, of course, “Yippee ki yay motherfu**er.”
3. HEART
Marriage and its struggles are part of this movie. But, it’s not same hastily put together story. John McClane and Holly Gennero-McClane’s marriage is on the rocks because Holly had a career opportunity in Los Angeles, John didn’t want to move from New York City, he was skeptical in if Holly’s career opportunity in Los Angeles would last, and he was generally unsupportive of her and her career. Realistic stuff. Even the arguments between the two of them feel true to life. Early in the film, McClane turns a perfectly amiable conversation with Holly into an argument about her not using his last name with the company she works for. After Holly leaves, we see McClane show remorse for picking a fight and hear him scolding himself. That’s a moment everyone’s had. People will pick fights, know it’s something they shouldn’t do, and they’ll regret it afterwards. However, people often don’t express remorse to the person they were arguing with, at least not immediately. So, the other person doesn’t know that they regret what they said. And if they did, they probably wouldn’t be mad at them anymore. But they don’t, so the tension lingers. In this movie, we don’t see any reconciliation until the movie’s end. But, it’s all realistic stuff: life problems, marriage drama, and insecurity. When we see John McClane and Holly Gennero-McClane reunite at the end of the movie, it’s very sweet. After all the terror, their initial problems seem pretty small, and easy to get over.
The subplot of John McClane and Al Powell’s relationship gives the movie heart too. McClane and Powell strike up a friendship through walkie talkies. Powell trusts McClane’s testimony from inside the building being taken hostage and McClane appreciates Powell’s belief in him and companionship. In an emotional scene, Powell tells McClane that the reason he is on desk duty is because of an incident where he shot a kid who he mistook for someone with a real gun. Powell says he couldn’t pull out a gun on anyone after the traumatic event. In the moment, McClane expresses sympathy. But then when McClane reunites with his wife and the audience thinks the movie’s over, one of the terrorist henchman Karl appears with a gun pointed at McClane, trying to get revenge after McClane killed his brother, another one of the terrorists in the building. But before getting a chance to do so, we see Karl being shot and falling to the ground. The camera initially just shows the gun firing, but then eventually reveals the one firing to be Al Powell. It’s a moment of redemption for Al, as well as a testament to how instinctive it is for him to protect his new friend John McClane. The movie could have easily ended without that scene and no one would have felt that the movie was incomplete in any way, but Die Hard goes the extra mile and gives us another powerful moment.
Merry Christmas, everyone. And remember that no matter what some killjoy says, Die Hard has all the elements of a great Christmas movie. It is also so much more than an action movie.
StuartTheWW 