Cinema Seminar:
Die Hard
A Christmas movie can be a movie that: (a) has Christmas-y themes, (b) takes place around Christmas, or (c) becomes something that people traditionally watch during the holiday season. Die Hard (1988) now qualifies by at least two of these criteria, settling the debate about its status definitively, for all time.
Of course, none of this was obvious when the film was released in the distinctly non-Christmas month of July, 1988, catapulting Bruce Willis from TV actor to Hollywood A-list action star, launching a major new franchise and fistfuls of quotable lines.
The 1980s were good years for action cinema, and Die Hard mastered all the tropes while blending enough elements of classic cinema to enrich the material. John McClane constantly quotes the golden-era Western heroes his character evokes, but this modernized protagonist is also not sure what it means to be a man in the 1980s, now that his wife has a fancy corporate job and no longer uses his last name. He has something to prove to her, to himself, and to the well-dressed terrorists several floors below.
It is screenwriting gospel to make sure that your villain is a complete and compelling human being, and the great work of Jeb Stuart (The Fugitive) and Steven E. de Souza (48 Hrs.) is elevated even further by Alan Rickman (in his big-screen debut, no less), who takes the complexity of lead terrorist Hans Gruber and elevates him into the bad-guy pantheon. He’s a worthy foil to our hero, and that is a large part of what makes the film appealing nearly 40 years later.
Adding to the fun we have an arrogant reporter, a slimy executive, a trusty cop sidekick, and enough explosions to light up the California sky at any time of year. Die Hard is a rare film: a surprisingly complicated portrait of a changing country at a particular moment, and still a fabulously good time.
