Die Hard

I will take the review requests under consideration. I've been quite busy, what with school starting again, and you all might have to wait a bit.

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It dont get much better then Die Hard or Bruce Willis LOL

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~*Missy*~

I have all four in my collection, #3 is my favourite, and despite the reviews I thhought #4 was great (obviously else I would not have bought it) #'s 1 & 2 equaly good.

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I have only seen 1 and 2. They are both good action films.
Number 2 is a bit better though, the reason is because of the shocking twist near the end.

It's really funny that I just saw this thread today, because I just had a marathon of them all yesterday. John McClane is my favorite movie character of all-time, and Hans Gruber is one of my favorite antagonists of all-time. I liked the first Die Hard the best though, then the third, then the fourth, and lastly the second. I still love them all though, they are all some of my favorite movies.

The original Die Hard my favorite Christmas Film but I was totally surprised by the last one . I thought they were going to kill it . Also the bad guys are not totally stupid in Die Hard films which is a big plus nothing worse than a stupid bad guy.

Awesome movie

Great action

I have all the four parts

fourth part is the best one.

Hmm, the first Die Hard bandits are trained terrorists with all sorts of high tech electronics, explosives, and automatic weapons and they get stopped cold by a lone cop with his police special and a cell phone talking to a desk cop on the outside and with a street-smart chauffeur who T-bones the escape vehicle in underground parking. The second bunch is a platoon of well-trained veteran US soldiers who again get out-thought and out-fought by essentially 1 guy who, in both casses, figures out in a couple of hours the complicated plots the bad guys have been planning for months. None of the die-hard baddies are very smart--they just think they are. James Bond faced tougher opponents in Dr. No, Goldfinger, From Russia with Love, and even Woody Allen's Casino Royale.

Bruce Wills has done a great job in it.This movie has Great pace, great gun battles, great fun. Die Hard is as high tech, rock hard and souped up as an action film.I like all the parts of this movie.

Willis has done an adequate lucrative job, but I don't get the feeling that he has streatched his acting muscles very far in any of these films when his most memorable scenes involve special effects and (I suspect) a stand-in stunt-man. He is about on a par in his Die Hard series as Mel Gibson in his Lethal Weapon remakes. In both cases, the viewer knows right from the start what he wants and what he expects, and Bruce/Mel spoons it up right on cue.

Totally gotta disagree. Bruce Willis "stretched his acting muscles" quite a bit in the first Die Hard. We've got a guy that's pissed, frustrated, excited, and upset throughout the entire film. What's more is the audience feels these emotions. I'm sorry, but you don't label that as just "adequate." The scene where he gets choked up in the bathroom wasn't even added until they started filming and yet it was brilliantly done. It's one of the handful of things that makes Die Hard for me. Seeing this guy at his most vulnerable just sets in realism more so than any of the other films. No, Bruce Willis does a superb job.

Have you ever seen Bruce Willis in a movie where he wasn't pissed, frustrated, excited, and upset? John, I'm glad you like the movie and are a Willis fan. But to me, they could plug Willis, Mel Gibson, and Clint "Dirty Harry" Eastwood into any of those loose-cannon-cop roles, and it wouldn't make any difference because they're all playing the same guy the same way.

The one film in which Willis impressed me with his ability to play something entirely different was Death Becomes Her where he plays this bald, meek, milk-toast character dominated by these weird women. Totally different from all of his other roles in which he is type-cast as a smart-mouth tough guy.

Nah, I don't think you could plug anyone else into the role. If you did, the movie wouldn't be the same. Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis do not play the role you're talking about the *exact* same way. That's just silly. Bruce Willis' Die Hard practically reinvented the action role and paved the road for future actors in other films.

On that note, I often wonder what Die Hard would've been like if they'd gone with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Would lose a lot of the charm, but re-doing it as a typical Schwarzenegger film would be fun anyway.

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Let me clarify--when I said Bruce, Mel, and Clint are playing the same guy, I didn't mean that each would play the same character--say the Die Hard series cop--in the exactly same way as the other actors. However, they would give a repeat performance of their individual tough guy images. Bruce Willis plays Bruce Willis in those roles; Mel Gibson plays Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood plays Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen would have played Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson would have played Charles Bronson. Each of their patented characters are a little different, so there would likely be minor differences in the Die Hard cop, depending on who was playing him. But IMHO, the differences among any of those "tough guy" personnas are small, so they could have plugged in Mel Gibson just as well as Bruce Willis and still had a box office smash. Besides in many key scenes of action movies, you're really watching stuntmen doing the dangerous things that they won't risk letting the stars do. It may even be the same stuntman substituting for Bruce who also substituted for Mel in one of his films.

I would be interested to hear exactly how Willis "reinvented" the action genre that has been around ever since films have been showing.

Simple, up until that time action movies and their heroes were invincible rampage killers. Die Hard put an average Joe in the shoes of a hero. Battered and bruised, etc. After its success, the action industry saw an explosion of similar films. Also, the whole "trapped in one setting deal" was another thing that reinvented the genre. For awhile after the movie came out writers and directors started calling the new action films like "Die Hard on a boat, Die Hard on a bus, Die Hard on a train." The action industry was changed over night because of Die Hard. Not only that, but the pay role of actors jumped because of it, too. Yea, Die Hard is quite epic in terms of action and films in general.

I agree with some of what you said, John, and I think Die Hard is the balls. But how, exactly, could anyone consider John McClane (the character, not the forum member) an "Average Joe"? He's just about as close as you can get to a stereotypical invincible action hero, except, of course, with a trademark receding hair line. Seriously, how many henchmen with sub-machine guns could one real life, over-the-hill cop take? I don't know the answer to that question, but I don't think the people who made Die Hard knew it either.

Watch The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three (1974) and tell me that Bruce Willis is more of an average schlub than Walter freakin Matthau. Because he's not.

He's not an "average Joe" in the strictest sense, I know. But he does get the crap beat out him, shafted by the authorities, and overall typical Joe stuff. That's all I mean by it. Because let's be honest, there's no "average Joe" that could kill all those German terrorists and do it without a scratch.

I could. My Kung-Fu is strong.

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