Digital Sextant

I could talk about industrialization and men's fashion all day...

Settling in to watch a movie last weekend, we ran through our list of holiday movies.  I wanted to watch Miracle on 34th Street, of course, or Mixed Nuts.  Jenny was in the mood for Elf or Love, Actually.  Nobody particularly wanted to watch Scrooged, The Santa Clause, the Muppet Christmas Carol, the Christmas Story, Home Alone, or National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.  Then I remembered that we had another holiday movie, so we popped in Die Hard.  Some thoughts after watching this old favorite again:

• Alan Rickman turns in a masterful performance.  Masterful.  I particularly like the sequence with Takagi at the beginning.  Bonnie Bedelia gets the best line, though, when preppie Ellis says “Your husband’s going to get us all killed.  If he would just let them get on with it, we’d all get out of this just fine.”  She replies, “Tell that to Takagi.”  Heh.
• We noticed three (count ‘em, three) connections to The Goonies.  First, there’s veteran character actor Robert Davi, who plays the opera-singing older Fratelli brother in The Goonies, growling his way through a cartoonish role as FBI agent Johnson (no relation).  Then, there’s Bruce Willis’ line when he finds Gruber’s hidden stash of C4–”Holy Mary Mother of God.”  Fellow Goonhounds will recognize this as the same epithet used by the Sheriff’s deputy when he spots One Eyed Willie’s ship sailing out to sea.  (ASIDE: I’ve always wondered about the salvage rights of that ship.  Legal battle!)  Finally, Jenny also noticed that Mikey’s mom, Mary Ellen Trainor, also has the role as a researcher for William Atherton’s scuzzy reporter.
• Die Hard also serves as a repository for a number of other actors reprising their iconic roles.  Okay, just two: Reginald VelJohnson, essentially playing the same character he would play for years on Family Matters. If only Die Hard had taken place in Chicago instead of L.A.  And don’t forget Paul Gleason, the jerky principle from The Breakfast Club playing a jerky police guy.  And finally there’s Al Leong, the man who tortured Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon and who menaced a mall in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.  He’s my favorite of the henchman, taking a pause from shooting police officers to eat candy from the lobby display.
• The cut-feet scene rivals any scene in any action movie for badassery.
• I noticed, this time around, that McClain’s response to Ellis’ death was not as clear cut as I remembered it.  I thought they wanted McClain to turn himself in, but no — they just wanted the detonators.  While it’s dubious to claim that negotiating with terrorists is ever a good plan, I’m not sure I agree that there was “nothing” McClain could have done to save him.

Die Hard holds up pretty well, though it dates itself as an 80s action movie, with oodles of swearing and unnecessary boobies sprinkled throughout the movie.