45th Favorite Movie - Die Hard

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

With Christmas time approaching (see other posts for my feelings about this), now is a good time to snuggle up by the fire and check out one of the all-time great Christmas movies.

Die Hard.

What does Die Hard have to do with Christmas you say? Remember, it is Christmas Eve when the German terrorists take over the Fox Plaza building in L.A. Bruce Willis' character, John McClane, a New York cop, is in town trying to patch things up with his estranged wife who is attending a Christmas party in the building. You get characters dressed as Santa Claus, "Let It Snow" on the soundtrack, and apparently there is even a Christmas theme to the DVD cover. What better way to bring in the Christmas cheer?

Of course, I'm kidding. The real reason to see Die Hard is to enjoy one of the best and most influential action movies ever made. It is funny, suspenseful, action-packed, and you can't help but root for the good guy. It actually holds up pretty well after nearly twenty years. Ok, writing that last sentence made me feel incredibly old. I still remember seeing this in the theater during the summer of 1988. It was the movie that me and all my friends wanted to see, it was rated R, and I was only 13. Somehow the guy taking tickets at the UA theater in Berkeley let me, my friend, and his 10 year old brother in to see it.

And we were never the same again.

I cannot convey to you just how COOL Bruce Willis was at the time this movie came out. He had made a name for himself as the wisecracking detective in Moonlighting, but he never really got a chance to run around and shoot guns in that show, which is what we as 13 year-old boys really wanted to see. My parents' generation had John Wayne, we had Bruce Willis.

I want to thank two of my friends from Fresno, Phil and Adam, for telling me about this: if you are ever channel-surfing and come across one of the Die Hard movies on FX, wait to hear Bruce say his infamous “yippee-kai-ay" line. The dubbing over this line is so awful, it is absolutely hilarious. They leave Bruce's voice alone for the “yippee-kai-ay" part, and then there is some other voice that tacks on, "Mr. Falcon", which makes no sense because there is no one named Falcon in any of the films. Comedy in the highest if you ever get a chance to hear it.

I really don't have much else to say about the movie, so I found some trivia on the IMDB that I thought was interesting:

*Bruce and Demi Moore tied the knot at the Golden Nugget hotel in Las Vegas during this shoot, Moore having recently broken her engagement to actor Emilio Estevez. Little Richard presided over the ceremony and former brat packer Ally Sheedy was a bridesmaid.

*Bruce Willis was the fifth choice for the main character. It originally went to Arnold Schwarzenegger then Sylvester Stallone then Burt Reynolds then Richard Gere before Willis got it.

*Bruce Willis's lines during the scene when he pulls the glass out of his feet were ad-libbed.

*The title in Spain was translated "Crystal Jungle" and in Poland "The Glass Trap". The Hungarian title is "Give your life expensive", the title of the sequel is "Your life is more expensive", and the third part is "The life is always expensive."