DIE HARD (1988) **1/2 An American Christmas movie. You know, songs and explosions, parties and profanity, cops and tycoons. Bruce Willis has to deal with an all-time all-star array of bad guys: the principal from The Breakfast Club (Paul Gleason, still trying to convince anyone who will listen that he's in charge) and the bureaucrat from Ghostbusters (William Atherton, now failing to find respect in the private sector), and those are just the ones on his team! More comprehensively in opposition are Alan Rickman and Alexander Godunov, leading a Baader-Meinhof splinter group offshoot turned capitalist! Now there's a thought, the cocaine snozzling corporate dealmaker is ready to talk. Everyone has common interests, it's just a matter of figuring out what they are. If only they would harness that power for good! It's not great art of hyper-realism, so no one treats it that way. John McTiernan allows Bruce and Alexander to walk around the roof of a skyscraper slinging machine-guns, but not worrying about cover, because it's more dramatic that way. Willis smirks into the camera when delivering the best of his lines, sharing his audience' pleasure at the cleverness of the scriptwriters. It's all pretty funny and well paced and as close to well-meaning as anything this macho can get without losing that charm. It takes a little too long for things to start blowing up, in my opinion, but you can't really complain about the final rubble count.
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