“Die Hard,” the first and still the best in the franchise, introduces the viewer to John McClane, a New York cop flying to Los Angeles to see his wife for the first time in six months. He’s scheduled to attend a Christmas party at her office, but elite thieves masquerading as terrorists (led by Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber) crash the party so that they can rob the company’s vault. McClane becomes “the fly in the ointment,” doing whatever he can to thwart Gruber’s plan and save Holly and the rest of the guests from the murderous thieves and the incompetent L.A. law enforcement officials who are steadily making the situation worse.
“Die Hard” combines some of the best things that Hollywood has to offer. It’s a precision heist film combined with one of the tightest and most thrilling action movies in history. It pits one of the silver screen’s most delicious villains against an everyman underdog who uses ingenuity, toughness, and resilience to save the day. You could fill this whole list with reasons why “Die Hard” is such a great film: it’s tightly plotted, with writing, directing, and cinematography that are too brilliant to be called merely “efficient,” though their smooth clockwork storytelling is a large part of what makes them so great. The performances are spectacular (in addition to Rickman and Bruce Willis, Hart Bochner deserves special mention as the unctuous executive Harry Ellis).
The action scenes are just as thrilling and ingenious today as they were in 1988. But the biggest reason “Die Hard” still endures is the fact that viewers can see themselves in John McClane. He’s not the smartest or biggest or strongest man in the room; he doesn’t have the most expensive equipment or the heaviest artillery. What he does have is a refusal to give up. He figures things out as he goes along. He gets banged up along the way, but he ultimately triumphs. “Die Hard” works precisely because John McClane falls down so many times. You don’t have to have the priciest toys or the biggest muscles to win, this action classic tells the audience. It’s the getting back up that matters.
