We love Bruce: Why Die Hard is one of the best action movies

The movie

Die Hard is an action thriller. It appeared in the cinemas 35 years ago, in 1988 (by Twentieth Century Fox, Gordon Company, Silver Pictures).

The protagonist

The protagonist is the one and only Bruce Willis. He plays John McClane, a New York City police officer who joins his wife for a Christmas party at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles. Many terrorists, led by Alan Gruber, take control of the building. They hold John’s wife, Holly Gennaro, and many others as hostages.

Bruce, this charismatic actor, is at his best. He has good looks, nice smile and playful eyes. He is not muscular but combines toughness, softness, and humor in an ideal combination.

Die Hard was his second ‘real’ movie. His first movie in which he was a protagonist was Blind Date (1987, directed by Blake Edwards). But we knew him from the 1985 TV series Moonlighting.

The remaining cast

The remaining cast of Die Hard was also top notch:

• The brilliant Alan Rickman plays Alan Gruber.
• The gifted Bonnie Bedelia plays John’s McClane wife.
• The excellent Reginald VelJohnson plays Sergeant Al Powell, who communicates with John McClane through a walkie talkie.
• The talented, young De’voreaux White plays Argyle, the limo driver who takes John from the airport to the Nakatomi building.
• Alexander Godunov masterfully plays the terrorist who dies to kill John.
• Hart Bochner plays excellently Holly’s silly and shallow colleague, who thinks he can negotiate with terrorists and ends up dead. And
• Robert Davi is top when playing the FBI agent, ‘the other’ Jonson.

The director

John McTiernan directed the movie. The direction was top notch. McTiernan had just directed another all-time classic movie, the Predator, with Arnie, that was screened one year before, in 1987.

The scenario

The scenario of Jeb Stuart and Steven de Souza was based on the excellent novel by Roderick Thorp. The scenario was tight, full of brilliant lines and holds you on the edge of your seat from start to end. The cinematography was exemplary.

Why Die Hard is an all-time classic

The movie is no doubt a classic. Everybody agrees on that. No doubt it enjoys an IMDB score of 8.2 (from 926,000 viewers).

Two facts justify Die Hard being an all-time classic.

First, it started a successful Die-Hard franchise.

Second, and more important, the success of Die Hard gave rise, during the last 30 years, to a series of mimic movies. These movies are based on the same general idea: many terrorists, i.e., the bad guys, take control of an ‘entity’ (i.e., building, ship, train, stadium) and one good, brave guy, that happens to be there, saves the day.

Examples are numerous. Some of the best cases are:

• the 1992 movie Under Siege (directed by Andrew Davis, with Steven Seagal, IMDB score 6.5)
• the 1995 movie Sudden Death (directed by Peter Hyams, with Jean-Claude Van Damme, IMDB score 5.8)
• the 2013 movie Olympus has Fallen (directed by Antoine Fucua, with Gerard Butler, IMDB score 6.5)
• the 2013 movie White House Down (directed by Roland Emmerich, with Channing Tatum, IMDB score 6.3)
• the 2018 movie Final Score (directed by Scott Mann, with Dave Bautista, IMDB score 5.8)
• to a certain extent the 2018 movie Skyscraper (directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, with Dwayne Johnson, IMDB score 5.8).

Yet, none of the above mimic movies reached the IMDB score of the original. All six had much smaller scores (lower by 1.7, 2.4, 1.7, 1.9, 2.4 and 2.4, respectively).

Yes, Bruce you are an iconic actor.

We stand by Bruce Willis and his family during this difficult period.