Hard Times at Christmas

It's not unusual for me to find time for one Christmas movie at some point over the holidays, but this year I've done a little more than that. On Christmas Eve, I watched Love Actually. (My third time; my husband's first.) Though I last wrote about that movie in the less verbose days of my blog, I really don't feel compelled to expand on my thoughts now. I loved it; I still love it; it's one of my very favorites.

What I haven't written about before is the movie we watched on Christmas night: Die Hard. I've seen it before. I think. I mean, I know I've seen parts of it over the years, many of them several times. But I'm not 100% certain I'd ever watched the movie entirely from beginning to end. Even if I had, it had been long enough that I didn't remember rather substantial chunks of the movie (particularly in the first act).

I'd probably be better off if I could recall with certainty having seen Die Hard before, because it's one of those foundational movies that casts such a long shadow and inspired so much of what followed that it can be hard to fairly judge it today. How much entertainment in the nearly 30 years since Die Hard has been pitched as "Die Hard in another context"? (On a bus: Speed. In a prison: The Rock. On Star Trek: "Starship Mine.") If any of Die Hard seems like silly cliché today, you might well remember that it may have invented the cliché.

I also feel like Die Hard was one of the first movies to embrace the idea that action movies could also be funny. You might quibble with that assertion; Arnold Schwarzenegger was certainly delivering cheesy one-liners around the same time. But Die Hard let other people besides the main character be funny. The movie is filled with quirky, quippy characters. Hell, it even lets the villain be funny.

It also lets the villain be compelling, which I think most people rightly acknowledge as the best thing about the movie. Die Hard was Alan Rickman's first feature film, and what a debut. He's both menacing and fun, clever enough to make things interesting (but foolish enough to lose in the end). Neither Rickman nor the director John McTiernan seemed to feel any fear that Hans Gruber's dry demeanor would deflate the movie, and thanks to that, we got decades of greatness from a wonderful actor. (It's a shame we're not still getting it.)

Rickman steals the show, but Bruce Willis shouldn't be overlooked. Another thing that stands out about Die Hard is how it's willing to make its hero human. He's decidedly not invulnerable in the way of so many 80s action protagonists; by the end of the movie, he's ripped to shreds, exhausted, and ragged. He also human before the action even begins, struggling with a failing marriage and an inability to express his feelings. The McClane character, and the man who plays him, is a key part of the formula that really works.

What's harder for me to judge now is the quality of the script overall. I feel like you can really see the scaffolding on which it all hangs, like the unfinished building in which the story takes place. There's no subtlety or art in how the movie slips in information; every detail arrives practically with a flashing sign telling you it Will Be Important Later. The adversaries outside of Hans Gruber -- the police and FBI agents on the ground outside -- are all laughably inept, and unreasonably mean-spirited just so they can be brought low later. It's funny, but also goes down a bit like empty calories. It's the stuff of more conventional 80s action movies when so much of the rest of the movie aspires to more. Then again, maybe I'm jaded to these aspects of the original by all the knockoffs that followed?

Overall, I find more to love about Die Hard than not. And yet, I'm sure I'm going to catch flak from people out there who I know have this on their lists of favorite movies. I'd put it at about a B+, which would surely come across as a recommendation for any other movie, but will just as surely be "not enough" for some people reading this. What can I say? I'm calling it like I see it.