#104 - Die Hard

Bruce Willis as John McClane, finding himself in a typically tight situation in "Die Hard".

REVIEW:

There is a scene near the end of Die Hard that sums up all that is wrong with the movie. Having just escaped from a building being held hostage by international thieves, police officer John McClane (Bruce Willis) is finally reunited with his wife (Bonnie Bedelia). A news reporter who has been established to be a swine throughout the course of the film asks McClane how he is feeling, and McClane's wife punches him. I have no doubt that this scene elicits cheers from audiences, but to me it represents the type of "cheap shot" filmmaking that Die Hard employs so often.

"Cheap shot" filmmaking is my term for a strategy often used by writers or directors who are starved for imagination: they make one (or more) characters so unreasonably loathsome, stupid or treacherous that when those characters get their comeuppance we are supposed to feel empowered and cheer. Some people get off on this type of storytelling, but it always leaves a sour taste in my mouth. That is why Die Hard is such a revolting film: it makes secondary characters so idiotic that it expects the audience to cheer for its hero by default. To list some of the examples: one of the hostages captured by the terrorists is shown to be a coke-sniffing yuppie, and since he eventually betrays our hero John McClane, his eventual death is supposed to have minimal (or worse, perhaps even comic) impact on the audience. A deputy chief of police who attempts to handle the hostage situation from outside the high-rise building makes one improbably stupid decision after another...his character basically serves no purpose other than to make the audience feel smart. And a couple of FBI agents who approach the building in a helicopter are shown to be callously accepting the possibility that some of the hostages will be killed...their indifference to innocent life is supposed to make it acceptable when they are eventually blown up in a fiery ball.

It is this general disregard for the value of life that haunts Die Hard, and became a staple of the right-wing action films that were prevalent in the 80s and early 90s. Some may argue that Die Hard is just a dumb action movie that is meant to entertain us, and I'm judging the film too harshly. But all films shape our view of the world through their images and content, and action films are no exceptions. Many people enjoy the wisecracking action hero, and there is no doubt that Bruce Willis set the template for this type of role with his performance in Die Hard. Yet I find it hard to chuckle as Willis paws through the bloody corpse of a terrorist he has just killed and then makes a crack about "cigarettes being bad for you" to the dead man. By constantly trying to get a macabre laugh or lessen the weight of the many murders in this film, Die Hard makes us wonder why we should care about any of the explosions or mayhem. If it's all a joke, where is the suspense? Even though Die Hard attempts to assure us that it's just an action film that shouldn't be examined closely, there is no doubt that the film is at its core a disturbingly right-wing diatribe. The instigating action in the story is that McClane comes to Los Angeles to visit his wife and convince her to give up a good, well-paying job that she has just received. McClane is also horrified to discover that his wife is working under her maiden name. These threats to the conservative patriarchy are unacceptable, and so they must be rectified by McClane proving his worth (in the carnage that follows). At the end of the film, McClane's wife Holly makes a point of emphasizing that she will now be known by her husband's last name instead of her maiden name...why precisely are we supposed to cheer for this?

Die Hard also reveals its right-wing roots in some awful stereotypes (such as a black limo driver), and in the resolution of a subplot involving a black police officer (the best-developed and most grounded character in the film) who aids McClane from outside the building. The officer, named Al, at one point confesses that he has been afraid to use his gun ever since accidentally shooting a 13 year-old kid, but at the end of the film Al rises to action to shoot down a terrorist who (somehow) has survived multiple explosions. The way this sequence is framed suggests that we are supposed to celebrate the empowerment that Al has rediscovered in using a gun. This macho, destructive attitude permeates throughout Die Hard, and I am perhaps in the minority in not finding it particularly attractive. Yet even if one puts aside the film's nasty tone, Die Hard isn't even very successful as an action movie (and certainly not "ingenious", as many have described it). There are no brilliantly-conceived action setpieces (the closest is an extended bit involving Willis in an elevator shaft), and the plot develops with monotonous rhythm since we just wait for yet another villain to be knocked off by McClane. Die Hard is so consistently chaotic and full of action that it is never boring, and if it is on television late at night I will usually watch it. But its innate ugliness, shameless conservatism and callous disregard for the value of human life should not be forgotten when we refer to it as "just an action movie". 

MY RATING:

44/100

WOULD IT BE IN MY TOP 250?

No...not even close.

WHY IS IT IN THE IMDB'S TOP 250?

The film was certainly an important milestone in American action cinema. It continued the Raiders of the Lost Ark tradition of an indestructible male action hero, and refined the use of irony and jokiness to alleviate the violence portrayed in the film. As far as the Schwarzenegger-Stallone-Willis action extravaganzas go, it's probably one of the better-executed, and Alan Rickman certainly made for a memorable villain. Willis also brought an Everyman quality to the role of McClane.

As for why people seem to view the movie as an action classic while it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, I guess most viewers just aren't as bothered by the movie's callous dismissal of secondary characters, pandering audience-pleasing moments and underlying reactionary conservatism as I am.