Kevin's Watch

Like the last handful of Ali fights this series just didn't know when to give up the ghost, but I think this one will bury it. Can Bruce Willis still be a plausible action character and keep John McLane going? Sure, but not with this story or this script. I saw a review of this movie which likened it to going to see the autopsy of a loved one.....I can get my head around that.

Of course it had all the cute one liners, the scumbags getting theirs in the shoot em up action, big explosions and stuff getting wrecked, but the plot had no substance and clearly no-one had done any research on Russia, which was basically portrayed as something out of a disneyland charicature. It also smacked of the sort of arrogance displayed in other people's countries that I think many Americans are trying to live down: I can imagine a few people in the Tank wincing a bit at the condescention in some of the distatseful "humour".

There are more than a few totally unbelievable scenes which even kids comics would have considered beyond the pale: the MacLane's waltzing into Chernobyl in T shirts whilst the bad guys are in Hazmat suits is one. However this is the stock in trade of this series and like the open forum in DH2 where our hero dodged the the consolidate fire from 5 Uzis fired from elevation whilst taking out the shooters with just a handgun, the idea that you can dodge tracer fire from a helicopter gunship at just 50 meters and somehow outrun it comes as no real suprise. Bad guys were no patch on previous illuminaries such as Olyphant/Rickman/Irons etc.

All in all a disappointment especially after HD4 which I thought was a real good romp..... this was sort of like the album a decent band carelessly cobbles together so as to meet the recording company contract requirements.

Last week I had the pleasure of seeing the original Die Hard on the big screen for the first time since 1988. I have literally seen this film at least a hundred times: it's family tradition to watch it on Christmas, my college roommate and I watched it nearly nonstop on cable, and I still manage to see it a couple of times a year. It is, as far as I'm concerned, not only the best action film ever made, but one of the better movies of any genre ever made.

So I was a little uneasy about seeing it again on the big screen. Aside from the fact that I know the film inside and out, I was concerned that it just wouldn't visually hold up now that I'm used to fancy computer effects.

Holy crow, was I worried about nothing.

It is in every way a perfect movie. Sure, Gruber's plan is ridiculous and full of holes (walk into a party without knowing what Tokagi looks like, make a bunch of noise then shoot him, turn the cops away when you need them to kill the power, etc), but the movie works through these things so effortlessly that they just don't matter. It doesn't waste its time with needless exposition; it only doles out information that's needed as it's needed.

It offers a brilliant villain and a real hero. Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman breathe real life into their characters via Jeb Stuart's amazing script. Willis in particular sells McClane with small touches that reinforce the "wrong place and the wrong time" conceit of the film. Simple things like yelling at the guy he's punching out, or telling himself out loud that jumping off a roof with a fire hose tied around his waist is insane, work wonders to get the point across that he's not Joe Supercop, just a guy doing what needs to be done.

And then there's the direction.....My God is this a beautifully directed movie. There's just nothing wasted....No flab, no excess....Just a taut story that zips along merrily with amazingly human touches tossed in at just the right moments. McClane tapping the centerfolds as he's running front he terrorists....The radio call to Al as he's bandaging his mauled feet.....Realizing he has to give up his machine gun in order to escape down the elevator shaft.....Simple things that add to the whole of the piece.

The only sequel that really worked well was Die Hard With a Vengeance, and it did so for many of the same reasons. Yes, the silliness of Gruber's plan is still there (what if McClane had been killed in Harlem while wearing the sandwich board?), but it remains as one of the best action movies of the '90s, and a worthy continuation of the character.

I enjoyed Live Free or Die Hard, but it's simply not the same. A Good Day to Die Hard didn't work for me at all, though it did have its moments.

Truthfully, the underrated 16 Blocks makes for a fine ending to the John McClane saga; Willis's character even has the initials "JM".

Interesting to note that both White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen were far better Die Hards than the "official" second, fourth, and fifth sequels.

Cail wrote:Sure, Gruber's plan is ridiculous and full of holes (walk into a party without knowing what Tokagi looks like

Are you sure he doesn't know Tokagi by face? That would have been easily researched, especially for the well-read Gruber. He would have been familiar with Tokagi's face and business history from any of a number of financial/business periodicals.

The biggest plot hole was the "let's steal the bearer bonds". Even in those pre-Internet days there was enough of a paper trail to prove that the holder of this particular bond is not its rightful owner--the serial numbers of the bonds stolen from the vault would have been distributed to any financial institution where he would have tried to cash out the bonds. Gruber would have known this which is why I don't think his plan was a high-profile robbery. No, I suspect he was actually trying to force the corporation into a position where it would have to file bankruptcy and his financial backers were in a position to purchase the company at a discount, netting them significant wealth once the bonds were recovered/replaced. Or...it was a set-up to force the activation of the insurance and reinsurance plans on the bonds. Either way, stealing the bonds was not the plan; rather, the loss of the bonds was the plan.

Hashi Lebwohl wrote:

Cail wrote:Sure, Gruber's plan is ridiculous and full of holes (walk into a party without knowing what Tokagi looks like

Are you sure he doesn't know Tokagi by face? That would have been easily researched, especially for the well-read Gruber. He would have been familiar with Tokagi's face and business history from any of a number of financial/business periodicals.

The biggest plot hole was the "let's steal the bearer bonds". Even in those pre-Internet days there was enough of a paper trail to prove that the holder of this particular bond is not its rightful owner--the serial numbers of the bonds stolen from the vault would have been distributed to any financial institution where he would have tried to cash out the bonds. Gruber would have known this which is why I don't think his plan was a high-profile robbery. No, I suspect he was actually trying to force the corporation into a position where it would have to file bankruptcy and his financial backers were in a position to purchase the company at a discount, netting them significant wealth once the bonds were recovered/replaced. Or...it was a set-up to force the activation of the insurance and reinsurance plans on the bonds. Either way, stealing the bonds was not the plan; rather, the loss of the bonds was the plan.

Without going beyond the film, Gruber doesn't know Takagi by sight.

And yes, the overall plan with the bearer bonds seems somewhat hokey, but I truly don't know how traceable they would have been in 1988.