THE WEEKLY REV - DIE HARD No movie ever exists in a vacuum - it will always be the product of many influences. Like a great meal, a great movie should recombine familiar ingredients to create something fresh, with maybe a splash of something unexpected - a “secret ingredient”. Every Saturday we will post a short review of a movie that has in some way inspired Rough Stuff. But we won’t be giving away our secret ingredient! “Come to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs” What’s great about Die Hard is that it pretends to be stupid - right down to its initially silly title (the subject of much ridicule before the movie was released) it wants you to think its just another 80s shoot-em-up. But then it turns out to be wickedly smart and self-aware, subverting our expectations. A generic-looking Euro-terrorist plot, a staple of 80s action flicks, turns out to be an intentionally-complicated ruse for something much simpler . “Who said we were terrorists?” says Hans Gruber. An indestructible, all-American, wise-cracking New York cop? Not so much. John McClain is very destructible, and Bruce Willis plays him with vulnerability and increasing exhaustion as the film unfolds. By making its main character more human than your typical action hero, Die Hard lets us really feel every punch, every slam, every shard of glass McClain must endure. And we cheer him on all the more, because we can see how hard he’s working to save the day. Verdict: Die Hard earns 4000 out of 5000rpm! Look for another edition of The Weekly Rev next weekend. Can you guess the movie from the below quote? “You ain’t afraid of no man!” “There’s something out there in those trees. And it ain’t no man.”
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 00:58:34 +0000
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