FILMBRATS - REVIEWS

New York cop John McClane is traveling to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve in order to spend time with his estranged wife and their two young children. The first thing he has to do after the plane lands is go pick her up at work, where her company is having an after hours Christmas Party thirty floors up. Well, it appears John isn’t the only unexpected guest, because a group of German terrorists have infiltrated the building and taken the party-goers hostage. Everything probably would have gone as planned, were it not for McClane. It’s up to the police officer to use every trick the book forgot in order to take down mastermind Hans Gruber and his mini-army.

“Die Hard” may have the title of a typical, mindless action movie, but that’s not what you’re going to find once you sit down and watch it. Yes, it has plenty of action (more on that in a bit), but it also has a well-told story with interesting characters. Kind of surprising when you see it was written by a guy with no previous screen credit (Jeb Stuart) and the guy who wrote “The Running Man” and “Commando” (Steven E. de Souza). Those films don’t really scream depth. Yet, despite some initial pacing problems, we have a film with quick, efficient, believable character development that helps establish later moments. The plot is basic enough so that the movie doesn’t come off as trying too hard, but it’s also good enough to avoid leaving unanswered questions. I didn’t really notice any gaping holes.

Then again, maybe it’s because I was so caught up in the action. Like I said, there is plenty of action, but it doesn’t start for a while. We have to be introduced to people, establish locations and motivations, and so on. And even once some gunplay and fighting actually shows up on the screen, nothing real major happens for a while longer. Personally, I loved this approach. The villains were bad enough to keep the suspense flowing and to keep you interested in what they’re trying to accomplish. McClane has the cat and mouse game going and has to avoid detection while radioing to an LA cop outside of the building. It’s a lot of build up. Luckily, it builds up to pure awesomeness. The film just gets increasingly intense and is always raising the stakes up until the climactic ending.

There’s some decent acting in here too. I wish we could lose the limo driver character Argyle altogether, and that LA cop Al (Reginald VelJohnson) doesn’t play bitter very well. But Alan Rickman as Hans does an absolutely fantastic job in his big screen debut. He just looks like a badass. Bruce Willis is the wild card. Previously known for “Moonlighting” and a couple of comedic pictures, he seemed like an odd choice for a big budget thrill ride type flick. However, Willis pulls it off very well. You’d think he was doing this the whole time. It also helps that the film is willing to play around a little bit and give him several one-liners (only occasionally corny) to prove that you can’t take yourself too seriously.

Director John McTiernan (“Predator”) does a great job here in keeping everything flowing. Although it may be a tad long to start, once it gets moving it never stops. McT also shows how an efficiently shot, non-flashy action movie can work just as well, if not better than one that tries to overcompensate with a visual gimmick. Some people may want run and gun action from the very start with non-stop fighting and explosions. They won’t find that here, but I’d be surprised if action movie fans were disappointed with this film.

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