T’was the night before Christmas and all through the house
Nothing dared move, not even a mouse;
The VCR was playing, John McClane was there,
The embodiment of Noel spirit, this I do declare.
One of the most iconic movies on the Christmas spirit, and no I am not talking about the usual suspects (the figure of speech, not the movie) like It’s a Wonderful life or other Christmas Carol knock-outs, The Grinch or any other tale about the importance of being kind and compassionate, I am talking about Die Hard. The first one. The best one. The Christmas one.
One of the most important features for an authentic Christmas movie is not to illustrate the importance and genuinely of human kindness (usually through consumerism, desperate last-minute shopping and gift-giving of trifling things), but is in fact to spark that warm and fuzzy feeling of unadulterated joy; and there is no greater joy than to see Bruce Willis in a dirty tank-top blasting criminals left and right. John McClane in the movie gives one of the most important gifts there ever was: freedom (conquered with guns, in righteous American spirit). He represents the simple man and through the kindness of his guns, he stops evildoers, and does so with a smile on his face and a bullet or a quip in the chamber.
Jokes aside, Die Hard is a good action movie from 1988 that happens to be also set during Christmas Eve; the story is not as important as the actors who play the roles of the hero and the villain. Bruce Willis has that hilarious yet brusque way of delivering one-liners when you least expect them and Alan Rickman’s performance of a sophisticated and authoritative criminal is, simply put, on point.
That’s about as much as I want to say; it’s just a solid action movie, and while it may have its flaws, it is not meant to be meaningful or transcendent. It’s meant to be fun.
Christmas-egg, Easter-egg or whatever
In the movie, one of the inspectors comments about John McClane’s true identity and says “Jesus Christ, he could be a fucking bartender for what we know”. Well, as much as biographical details go, Bruce Willis was in fact a bartender before becoming an actor.
I would give this movie an 8 out of 10 “Yippee ki-yay you-know-whats”.