Spooky how the Die Hard series contains most of the elements of 9/11: terrorists, mass destruction in a tall building, planes being deliberately crashed, etc. Be some time before we see them on network TV, I suspect. Which is a shame, since the first, in particular, is a classic: even after the whole "Die Hard in a [fill in the blank]" genre has been done to death, the original still comes up fresh, new and more entertaining than the entire career of Steven Seagal.
Why this is the case, is harder to quantify - let's face it, if replicating this baby were easy, all the knock-offs would be much less of a lottery for the viewer, not least the two sequels. Director McTiernan's subsequent other work has also been patchy, most recently the ongoing fiasco of Rollerball, which is currently being hacked down to a kid-friendly rating after disastrous previews. Willis, too, has never quite matched up to the iconic standard of John McClane, and as for screenwriter Steven De Souza...need I say more than Streetfighter II? Thought not.
That only really leaves Rickman, and he could well be the key, given how his villainous turn was also the best thing about Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. A memorable hero needs a memorable villain, just as God needs the Devil; the best Bond films tend to be those with great bad guys (and the same generally goes for Disney movies, oddly enough!). What's more remarkable is that, in Die Hard, they don't get to confront each other for the first 90 minutes or so, just sneer via walkie-talkie.
It still works though, and if the phrase "never a dull moment" referred to any film, this is it, even if the body-count remains flat-lined at zero for the first 20 minutes. The script is sharp, all the characters - even the minor ones - genuinely are just that, characters, rather than devices for hanging plot points, and the soundtrack riffs elegantly from Beethoven to Singing in the Rain, nodding to Kubrick on the way. If Bin Laden did gain any inspiration from this, you certainly can't deny the man has good taste.
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