With the 25th anniversary of the movie “Die Hard,” the recent release of a new sequel and the release of a new DVD set containing the original and all the previous sequels, a lot of people are writing about the 1988 original and how great it was.
I’ve already seen plenty of write-ups doing a good job in that regard, so I won’t rehash them. I’ll just briefly say that:
1) I think it’s arguably the best action film of all time. Sometimes I consider all action films that came after it to be redundant.
2) As far as I’m concerned, there is no “Die Hard franchise.” There’s the original movie — end of story. I saw the first sequel, “Die Hard 2: Die Harder,” wasn’t impressed, and haven’t bothered with any of the others. The WHOLE POINT of the first movie is that John McClane isn’t a super-powered operative who routinely gets in epic adventures, but a regular guy who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. So I’m writing as if the sequels didn’t happen. Which they shouldn’t have in the first place.
Anyway, it’s easy to think of it as JUST an action movie. It hits all the beats. The explosions. The fist fights. The catchphrases. But I’ve got a couple of other interpretations.
See, I like looking for subtexts in movies. And whether or not the filmmakers actually intended for the movies to have those subtexts is pretty much irrelevant, as I see it. (more…)
Tom Joyce's chamber of the bizarre 