Undying Movie Classics: Die Hard

      I can't even begin to comprehend how spoiled I am when it comes to the plethora of quality cinema I have been exposed to.  Ever since I can recall, I have bathed in the warm glow of a screen, my senses delicously assaulted in various genres, themes and film speeds.  My tastes have only improved in the last decade, making me much more susceptible to the undying classics that were the last generation's blockbusters.  Now, being a broke cinephile with too much time on his hands, I have discovered something that was lost in the chasm of my mind when I didn't appreciate what I grew up on; the genesis of the all too human heroic protagonist in a wife beater, from the powerhouse that is Die Hard.
    
      This movie brings back a painful memory of not fully appreciating this pulpy masterpiece.  Quite simply, it is the Holy Grail of the steaming dung heeps that have, for the past three decades, been trying to recreate the magic that the slightly balding Bruce Willis brought to the silver screen.  I mean, how is it possible for the entirety of Hollywood's talent to have missed the most basic yet foolproof blueprint for an action movie with heart?  To be fair, there have been movies that have, for the most part, done the bare minimum to create an action movie.  Unique, multifaceted setting? Check.  Flamboyantly vulgar and foreign villain?  Sometimes even too much.  A pyrotechnics spectacle to even rival Disney World?  As evident by my scarred retinas, also check.  Yet, despite all that 50 million that was put to good use, no one has even bothered to really look at the formula.  At this point, plagiarism would be a welcome reprieve in exchange for some thin veil of quality.
     
     In rather stark contrast, Die Hard gives a sense of completion when viewing the film..  Right off the bat, we are introduced to the main protagonist; a worn down man that has an understandably big fear of flying.  With jaw clenched, he is given a tip from a friendly passenger that will help his nervousness.  This perfectly set up my feelings when watching this as to how this guy could possibly even cope with whatever impending doom he was about to stumble upon.  Ultimately, I felt just a tad distrustful of his abilities, and that made it already different from the usual fare I had grown accustomed to.  Admittedly, that is a silly thought to even consider, seeing as how it IS Bruce Willis, flaunting that smug smirk he uses in all of his usual dribble.  

     As the film continues, the familiar pieces of the puzzle start to form an invitingly commonplace affair.  I became strangely giddy when the stereotypical black sidekick comes into play, not to mention the over the top foreign baddes that plague the gigantic set peice that is Nakatomi Tower.  Speaking of which, let's take a look at one of the main characters.  Each and every nook and cranny of this bulding is seemingly utilized to its full extent.  When a scene calls for verticality, our hero is plunged down elevator shafts and an assortment of stair ways.  Yet if tension/suspense needs to be highlighted, the film shrinks the hallways and tightens up the air ducts to make us and our shit out of luck protagonist every bit disoriented.  This is thanks to the great dynamcic of the cinematography and the characters that sell every facial expression.  There's something disturbingly evocative about witnessing a sterile, controlled environement like this building be reduced down to a nightmarish hell scape,  blood spatters and bullet holes riddling the walls.  

     Quite possibly one of the main attractions is the head of this gang of german baddies, Hans Gruber.  Brilliantly played by one Alan Rickman, this is an antagonist that a multitude of other films have yearned to copy.  It's not that he is grandiose in stautre or idelas. In fact, it really boils down to him being a highly trained petty thief.  But damn it if he isn't the classiest bastard to charm me while he shoots innocent bystanders in the face.  Seriously, it's as if they wrote the movie with Alan Rickman alongside them, advising as to how much of a dick his character should be.  Suffice to say, no one has matched the calibre of his performance in any other movie of this genre for a damn long time.  
     
     Of course, the top billed talent that headlines this act is the show stealer, Burce Willis. He is the personification of the every man, albeit with slightly superior survival skills than myself.  As mentioned before, this hero has flaws; he hates flying, his marriage is going down the drain, and he has a mean bald spot, thankfully with no comb over in sight.  So, when the shit hits the fan, it comes as a pleasant surprise to see the animilistic ferocity of his character when his life is on the line.  Without spoilers, I can tell you the baddies start falling like dominos.  But it's not a rampage he goes on.  He is actually calculated in his actions, for the most part.  Rarely is he not one step ahead of Gruber and his goons.

     What gets me with this portrayal of his character is that his actions mirror my perceived intentions in the scenarios he comes across.  Every time he is seriously injured he reacts accordingly to the trauma, eventually transitioning to a visually evident look of strained determination to push through all the pain.  Already at this point this character has seperated himself from the superheroes of the genre who, under similar circumstances, just shrug off everything as minor flesh wounds.  In one particularly important scene, we see the sheer will power of our protagonist as he is forced to run barefoot across a floor covered in broken shards of glass.  Up until that point, people had never really seen a hero figure like John McClane become so vulnerable,  limping around like a wounded animal, staving off death to the last possible second.  it's in the power of this scene where we see the director's intention to involve the audience in the best way possible; the bond between the viewer's sentimentality and the character's central being.  

     Calling this film anything other than a classic is a disservice to the massive talent behind and in front of the camera.  It has solidified itself in the often diluted pantheon of 80's action cinema as the vulgar and deliciously brutal grandfather of that era, and I am all the more thankful for the exposure.