Die Hard 1988

[7.9/10] John McClane and Hans Gruber joke a lot about the idea of John as a cowboy. They name drop the likes of John Wayne. McClane drops his famous “yippee-ki-yay motherfucker.” He even adopts the name “Roy” as his nom de guerre, as a wry tribute to Roy Rogers. And it’s not hard to see why. Despite the fact that he’s a beat cop in a corporate tower, he’s a gunslinger and lone vigilante, much in the vein of the “me against the world” heroes who prowled Hollywood’s version of the old west. It’s an appropriate guise for John to slip into, however far he may be in time and backdrop from the cattlemen of old.

But the cowboy boot also fits because of the cultural fixture of cowboys as emblems for the American idea of rugged individualism. They are rough-hewn, hardy champions of the wilderness, existing apart from the niceties of civilization, surviving on the backs of their own grit and determination, without the comforts or the numbers their moneyed and malevolent counterparts do.

While Die Hard trades dusty plains for downtown Los Angeles, and Gene Autry for Run DMC, it trafficks in much the same spirit. It’s sympathetic to John McClane, a beat cop who has to rely on his pluck and his resourcefulness to outwit and outgrit his crafty and well-outfitted enemies. It’s sympathetic to Al Powell, an LAPD desk sergeant who knows from instinct who to trust and who not to. It’s sympathetic to the low-to-the-ground guys who don’t go by the book and exist apart from the softness of luxury or the cluelessness of authority.

And it’s unsympathetic to just about everyone and everything else. Die Hard is a movie of contrasts, there to paint our hero as a man apart. The script, from Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, immediately paints John McClane as a hardscrabble New York cop who feels uncomfortable and out of place in the world of limousines, boardrooms, and corporate parties that his wife has chosen in Los Angeles. He is a rough-and-tumble dude, who mouths off like a real Noo Yawker and gets gradually filthier as the film progresses, juxtaposed with the well-groomed, suited-up Hans Gruber who utters his orders in a genteel foreign accent.

While the bad guys, his wife’s employers, and his hapless would-be allies all use fancy technology, specialized vehicles, and souped up hardware, John uses whatever’s around and available--whether it’s a sling, a firehose, a ream of packing tape, or even a dead body--to do his dirty work. And while Gruber, the LAPD, and the FBI all deploy elaborate plans so precise and predictable that they all lead to ruin, John wins the day by muddling through and improvising as a “fly in the ointment.”

John is different. That's the point Die Hard makes over and over again in ways both deft and over-the-top. Those differences are why we sympathize with him, why we root for him, why we invest in the story of one unexpected vigilante standing against a host of institutions--corporate hacks, foreign benefactors, mercenary media, hidebound police leadership, smug feds--who are brought down by a decent, regular guy who stands apart and just so happens to be free of their corrupting influences.

In truth, I don’t love it as a theme. There’s a blind adoration of individualism in the bones of Die Hard that seems appropriate for its 1980s time period and also painfully myopic. Throw in the arc of John’s erstwhile partner Al, which can be roughly (and, admittedly, uncharitably) summed up as, “I lost my nerve after shooting a kid, but now I got my shootin’ groove back!”, and you have a film that plays a little uncomfortable to modern eyes, given the way we’ve seen that sort of championing of instinct and the individual over evidence and community-driven solutions that the film implicitly endorses perverted in the decades since Die Hard made the scene.

And yet, I love the fact that Die Hard has something on its mind. Despite the ubiquity and shallowness of how “Die Hard on a _____” practically became its own subgenre in the wake of this film’s success, Die Hard is not an empty action movie. It has something to say, about the little guy taking on multiple goliaths, about the fecklessness of authority figures, about what’s real and what’s phony, about what makes a relationship work, and it uses them all to drive the story and the characters.

Because both absolutely make the movie. You can understand why this was a star-making role for Bruce Willis. His wise-cracking, sharp-eyed, sometimes sad sack persona makes you believe this determined schmuck could take down twelve terrorists with guns and bombs, and makes you like him in the process. Villain Hans Gruber is underdeveloped, but elevated by a crisp performance from the inimitable Alan Rickman, who fills in the gaps with velvet-tongued panache and a certain shitheel charm. And the most underrated part of the film is Reginald VelJohnson as Al, who provides the heart of the picture and delivers material that is comedic, cheesy, or achingly sincere to perfection every time.

In truth, the rest of the film is mostly populated by cartoon characters. Gruber’s goons--including his dragon, Karl--are all pretty interchangeable beyond a chipper hacker and a sly lookout, and even they’re over-the-top. Corporate shill Ellis is the eightiesest eighties guy to ever eighties. Every other member of law enforcement is a wrong-headed, power-hungry, over-the-top stereotype of police authority figures, especially Paul Gleason’s deputy chief. A scruple-free T.V. reporter uses every dirty trick in the book. And although he’s painted with a heart of gold and gets a moment of triumph at the end of the film, Argyle the limo driver is a goofy, outsized figure as well. Likewise, there’s some artifacts of the eighties here. For a movie devoted to the greater “realness” and down-to-earth qualities of John McClane, Die Hard gives him no shortage of dry cool action one-liners, a pathology that affects most of the characters.

But they’re contrasted with the lived-in humanity in some crucial scenes. John’s estranged wife Holly is underwritten, but Bonnie Bedelia imbues her with some steel. More to the point, their conversation during their Xmastime reunion, full of both barely restrained longing and unresolved frustration, plays as true to couples who love one another but face obstacles in difference in what they want. In the same vein, the film’s secret weapon is the conversations between John and Al, two beat cops who understand one another on an intuitive level, with a joking but intimate connection between them that helps to humanize both characters and use that mutual sounding board to add back in some humanity and emotion during the film’s larger than life events.

The funny thing is, the film’s big showpiece sequences are, in some ways, the least interesting parts of the film. Maybe I’m simply inured to big screen spectacle after decades and decades of Die Hard’s successors blowing up bigger and bigger things, but the various missile attacks, bomb drops, and explosions do little to move the needle to modern eyes. Likewise, the fight choreography and the way director John McTiernan and company shoot the combat is fairly indifferent, with plenty of quick cuts and rapidly-shifting geography.

But where the film shines in the action department is its ability to create tension. John hanging from a gun sling and reaching for an exit while the baddies stalk him is stressful; him skulking through the air vents while a vengeful goon prods them with his automatic rifle makes your hair stand up; John swinging from a firehose to escape and explosion and untangling himself before it drags him to his doom is suspenseful as all hell. The composition and editing do well at making you fear the worst and get that sigh of relief when John wriggles out of some predicament yet again.

McTiernan & Co. also preserve the humanity in those bigger moments by focusing on the faces of the key figures. We famously see the strain on John’s face when he uses a lighter to illuminate his way inside the air vent. We see Holly’s realization that it’s her husband who’s saving the day and causing all this ruckus wash over her face. We see Al’s steely visage come into focus from behind his revolver when he takes down Karl in the film’s grace note. And most iconically, we see Gruber’s steady realization of his loss and impending demise as he plummets to his doom. The response and reactions are firmly present here, and help the film’s characters pop.

So does a surprisingly tight script. There’s scads of little setups and payoffs in the film. John’s airplane seatmate gives him the advice for adjusting to a new environment that accounts for why McClane spends most of the movie running around barefoot. The script establishes the meaning of Holly’s fancy new watch she gets from her job in the early going, which accounts for the symbolism in the climax when John unclasps it to defeat Gruber. And most famously, John’s stray gaze at some tape sets up his gun on his back that lets him get the drop on his adversary.

For as shaggy and bombastic as Die Hard can be in places, those kinds of choices make for an unexpectedly clockwork film. Nearly everyone and everything here has a purpose. Holly’s coworker, Ellis, is a buffoon, but it’s his buffoonery that exposes John’s identity to Gruber and gives Hans another angle on his gun-toting irritant. The news reporter seems like a soapboxing waste of time as a secondary antagonist of sorts, but it’s his careless need to get the story regardless of who might get hurt that exposes the connection between John and Holly to Hans. Hell, even silly Argyle, who’s largely comic relief, plays a role in stopping Gruber’s crew from escaping. Every stray part feeds back into the main plot eventually, which is some deft writing.

The same goes for the clever scenarios and predicaments at play. One of the film’s best conceits is the fact that John, the cops, and the bad guys, all have to communicate on the same C.B. radio channel. It’s good fodder for all the characters to play coy, taunt one another, confide in one another, manipulate one another, say whatever they can without fully saying it, which adds layers to both the dialogue and the film’s cat and mouse game. Likewise, Hans’ ploy to use terrorism as a smokescreen for simple theft turns the audience’s expectations on their ear, and allows for more reveals and ticking clocks as he toys with the authorities and buys time for his real plan.

That's the other big boon of this movie: the cops may be idiots, but Gruber is a legitimately crafty and formidable opponent for John. He’s no pushover or sap. His sharpness in using the textbook FBI response to get into the vault containing the bearer bonds is masterful. His effort to con John into thinking he’s just another hostage, rather than the mastermind, makes for a great dynamic between the two of them and a good excuse to put the duo in the same room in the second act. And while his goons fly off the handle, Gruber is steady and strategic enough to seem like a worthy adversary for McClane in their skyscraper, hostage-filled chess game. The cleverness and intelligence of Hans Gruber, his ability to make smart choices in the moment and seem in control even when things aren’t going to plan, is what makes McClane’s victory over him so satisfying.

Well, that's half of it at least. The other half is something simple but powerful: John McClane is vulnerable and beatable for most of the film. He limps and bleeds and winces as he gets gradually worn down in the fight. He frequently seems overwhelmed and incredulous at his own actions, having to use self-talk to convince him to get through his next daring or foolhardy feat. Despite his heroics, McClane is never the stone cold badass whose victory seems assured. He’s a fallible, ordinary guy caught in an extraordinary situation, as fretful and fallible as anyone would be in such a perilous situation.

John is the action genre’s ultimate everyman, in the way he has to scramble to improvise his way out of some dangerous bind, in the way he’s exasperated by the cops’ response or incredulous at the insanity of his own choices, in the way that, in what he thinks could be his final moments, he wants his wife to know that he’s sorry and should have supported her. Yes, McClane is a lone vigilante in the vein of so many others in cinema, but he has feet of clay in the way that few of those other iconic figures do.

Apart from the broader perniciousness of the perspective behind the film, I love how McTiernan and his team use those ideas to make us root for John. The truth is that John McClane doesn’t represent true heroism in the real world anymore than John Wayne’s misadventures represented the harsher edged reality of the true wild west. But if you can accept them as simply stories, pieces of entertainment meant to make us grip our armrests and cheer for the bad guys’ demise, it’s still fun as hell to see the cowboy saddle up and win the day.

The attraction, and the danger, of the cowboy archetype is that there’s something almost inherently compelling about the lone figure standing against the whole world, doing things the right way, the regular joe’s way, his way. We love to see the man of the plains, or the parts of the concrete jungle that came to represent “realness” in the modern popular consciousness, beat back the better-fueled and better-funded baddies with little more than guts and determination. I don’t love the championing of that idea in real life, but it always made for a hell of a western; and it still makes for a hell of an action movie.