The pReview Re-viewing retRo
International Die Hard Day Re-viewing of..
Die Hard
(it is highly recommended to view the trailer and THEN read!)
(warning: Contains cursing and quite possibly the best Christmas movie ever conceived. Yippee Ki Yay, Motherfucker!)
by Jeff Finck
written: 6/23/2012
Release Date: July 15, 1988
The premise: Bruce Willis plays witty NYPD officer, John McClane. John is on a Christmas vacation in Los Angeles.. Beautiful, snowy Los Angeles! I mean, beautiful, smoggy Los Angeles! McClane's wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), is prepped to make a husband-laden appearance at her company's Christmas party. When, all of a sudden, Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and a ragtag group of international terrorists show up and crash the party like a bunch of chlamydia at an orgy. McClane must save his wife and hostages, defeat terrorism, and (I hope) start a trend of being covered in no less than four gallons of blood by the end of it all. But don't think this movie is all one-note, action-packed mayhem.. Die Hard looks to set some wonderful leaps forward in diversity: McClane gets two, count them, TWO endearing black sidekicks, and much the same way that Sidney Poitier showed up at the Drayton's, I believe the terrorists subtext is that they're just looking to breakdown stereotypical walls, as well as promote interracial synergy.. But, you know, with guns and violence.
The trailer kicks off at the Christmas party with Old Man Nakatomi* welcoming everyone to the celebration. Well, everyone except a small band of terrorists with 640 million dollars’ worth of bearer bonds dancing through their head, full on replacing sugar plums and whatever the hell else runs wild through a terrorist’s head.. Probably Käthe Kruse dolls or Biergarten Barbie or something. Anyway, Old Man Nakatomi, of course is the owner of Nakatomi Plaza and head honcho for the humbly named, Nakatomi Corporation. Nakatomi Corp being, of course, the absolute leader in whacky, fucked up robot-spiders that molest skyscrapers.
As the terrorists crash the party, lone wolf John McClane has other plans.. Vile, horrible, terrible plans, full of trickery and general chicanery.. He plans on sneaking into the air ducts, absconding with machine guns, killing intruders, assaulting everyone with one-liners, smoking like a bad ass, a sploding splosions, and punching Zack Morris in the mouth hole. That'll teach you to toy with our emotions by carrying on a whirlwind, up and down, "will they or won’t they end up together" romance with Kelly Kapowski, you bastard!
His calls for help are completely in vain. McClane attempts an SOS on a police channel, giving them deets like a motherfucker. He would have been better off just setting up traps Goonies' style and then kick back and enjoy the fun! The skeptical police warn McClane to get off of the police channel and stop trying to get them to come down to Nakatomi Plaza or else they're gonna come down to Nakatomi Plaza and make him stop telling them to come down to Nakatomi Plaza. Luckily for McClane, the police are a man of their word.. Woman of their word?.. Force? Yeah, force of their word.. And apparently take their own threats very seriously. An attack chopper whisks through the city, and before issuing their reprimands, McClane is waylaid by a flash bomb and ballet dancer turned Norse Thunder God doppleganger, Karl (Alexander Godunov).
Narrowly escaping, the one man army with bare feet dodges bullets AND birther questions, claiming Jersey (Though, I'm not sure why) as his birthplace. Presumably remembering when he lived in New Jersey (And possibly receiving a higher powered vision of the future..), McClane uses the rest of the trailer to yuck it up by shoving bullets, rockets, C4, and wit into the throats, knees, minds, and dicks of his adversaries. I can't fucking wait for this! I can only hope that somehow in the future, they make more of these movies.. But I may have to face the facts that there is no way one man is so unlucky that anything like this Christmas nightmare could happen to the same guy even one more time.
*I am being told that there is, in fact, NO "Old Man Nakatomi" in this movie. My bad.