Die Hard at 30:
Come Out to the Coast, Have a Few Laughs

| published September 19, 2018 |

By R. Alan Clanton, Thursday Review editor

Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber and starring Dwayne Johnson and Neve Campbell, the fair-to-middling 2018 summer action film Skyscraper—in which Johnson’s character must battle bad guys while also engaging in all manner of complex, dangerous stunts in a 220-plus story 3,500 foot Hong Kong mega tower—proves that jumping out of, off of, and rappelling the glass and steel surfaces of exceedingly tall buildings to evade armed hooligans is still a popular and profitable Hollywood venture.

Thurber’s film, by most accounts (ours included) is a cheap and obvious rip-off of the classic mayhem-in-the-high-rise genre, starting with the paternal granddaddy of all of the 1970s disaster flicks, Towering Inferno (Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, Faye Dunaway). Towering Inferno (1974) shares the film history books with its in-laws, among them maternal granddaddy, Earthquake.

Both films broke ground with mechanical and miniature special effects in an age before digital computers, and both movies earned dump truck-loads of cash for the studios. Their biggest legacy, however, has been their penchant for reproduction—a fertility rate which in ebbs and flows has produced a hundred or more “disaster” movies over the decades, films devoted to one broad but beloved topic: the destruction of mankind and its infrastructure by earthquakes, fires, asteroids, meteors, floods, typhoons, tornadoes, hurricanes, plagues, Mayan calendars, nuclear weapons, flying sharks, zombies, and hostile aliens.

Few have been entirely original. Fewer still have been worth serious discussion or comment (though frequent TR writer Cameron Dale did review last year's tepid but effects-laden Geo Storm).

So it was refreshing moment indeed in the summer of 1988 when Bruce Willis, in those days still linked strongly to his popular and Emmy award-winning TV role in Moonlighting, stepped up his star-power game and took on the role of John McClane, a New York City cop on a brief holiday vacation to Los Angeles to visit his estranged wife and his kids.

That role, in the John McTiernan-directed Die Hard, redefined Willis, catapulting him instantly from merely an up-and-coming TV regular to a top Hollywood box office star, by some accounts thrusting him into the elite top-tier circle which that year included Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford and Tom Hanks. Die Hard was also the first high-rise placed plot not linked in any traditional way to the concept of the “disaster” film.

Based on the 1979 novel by Roderick Thorpe, the screenplay was—and here’s a strange bit of Hollywood backstory—originally written around Frank Sinatra, and intended as a sequel of sorts to Sinatra’s gritty, hard-boiled performance in the 1968 crime film The Detective, about a New York City cop who must attempt to simultaneously solve two seemingly unrelated murders while also battling the powers-that-be at City Hall, a few of whom have an interest in seeing the cases go unsolved. Critics praised Sinatra’s unflinching, nuanced performance, and The Detective as a film was seen as critical to the transformation of the genre of the police movie from the highly romantic and sanitized versions seen by the public and the more fact-based, reality-based depictions seen in later films, such as The French Connection.

A follow-up seemed certain. Years passed before Thorpe completed the sequel, written more-or-less with Sinatra in mind, even adjusting for the passage of real time. The new screenplay and novel, titled Nothing Lasts Forever, would place our same NYC cop inside the high rise corporate offices of the fictional Klaxon Oil Corporation, where slick, heavily-armed German and Euro terrorists have seized the building and taken as hostage—among others—Sinatra’s daughter and granddaughters, spurring our New York detective into high stakes tension and physical action.

That 1979 novel would finally arrive on the desk of producers for active consideration in the mid-1980s, and by 1987 the project was given the green light.

Because of very specific contractual arrangements dating back to the 1960s, 20th Century Fox was required to give Sinatra first shot at that lead role despite the huge passage of time. Sinatra, perhaps flattered, nevertheless immediately turned down the role. The execs at Fox were no doubt relieved: Sinatra was just months shy of his 70th birthday, and had little practical interest in an action movie which would require the kind of physical pounding, high stakes leaping, and hand-to-hand combat described in the script.

Producers Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver, along with scriptwriters Steven de Souza and Jeb Stuart, then sought out numerous other first and second tier stars: Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Don Johnson, Clint Eastwood, and several others were on the list of possibilities. Both Burt Reynolds and Richard Gere were offered the part: both summarily rejected it. All either turned the project down or found themselves contractually obligated elsewhere with other films and other projects. So 20th Century Fox began to look outward, and away from the standard A-List names associated with action and thrills.

Enter Bruce Willis, second-billed star of the highly popular and critically lauded 1980s television series Moonlighting. Despite the risks of picking Willis for the lead role (as opposed to choosing a bigger-named star of the era) the suits at Fox gambled that Willis could, in fact, carry the part effectively, especially if the screenplay were infused with enough irony and humor to make the role more adaptable for Willis. That risky gambit would pay off for all involved.

Though released in the summer of 1988, Die Hard was, on the surface at least, a Christmas movie with a dynamic plotline. McClane’s trip to LA is a grudging task at best: angry at his wife because her career trajectory has taken her to the West Coast and into a de facto separation, he hopes to spend a few days with his kids and perhaps patch things up with spouse Holly (Bonnie Bedelia). Arriving jetlagged and grumpy, he nevertheless accepts a limo ride from the airport to the newly constructed Nakatomi Plaza, a sleek glass and steel tower owned by the Japanese conglomerate where his wife is now a top executive. The plan is simple enough: McClane will hobnob with 35 or so revelers attending a holiday party upstairs, then retire with his wife back to her house in the LA suburbs, where his kids, the Christmas tree, and cookies and milk await.

But famously, things don’t turn out that way. Soon after McClane’s arrival, heavily armed thieves, essentially posing as leftist terrorists, enter the high rise, killing two security guards downstairs and effectively commandeering the structure’s high tech security system, elevators, surveillance apparatus, and all alarms. Their goal is nothing less than breathtaking: though they feign an interest in releasing radical prisoners in various jails around the world, what they really want is the $650 million in cash—mostly U.S. government bearer bonds—neatly stacked and stored in the high tech and heavily encrypted vault within the skyscraper. Members of the terrorist group are heavily armed, and, in addition to their machine guns and handguns, have brought with them a truckload of additional firepower—shoulder-launched missiles, rocket propelled grenades, incendiary devices, bazookas, duffle bags filled with plastic explosives, you name it.

Access to the vault is the central concern of the terrorists. Played to chilling and wicked perfection by Alan Rickman, the group’s leader, Hans Gruber, attempts to politely—then threateningly—extract the most sensitive and critical code to open the safe (the vault has seven carefully layered security keys) from the Japanese-American Joseph Takagi, president of the U.S. operations of Nakatomi. When Takagi refuses to give up the code, Gruber kills him. McClane, hiding in an adjacent room, witnesses the murder, then escapes with only his handgun. Thus a massive, high-tech game of cat-and-mouse ensues, as McClane attempts—against all odds—to outflank and outsmart and outfistfight the bad guys, while not revealing the fact that his own wife is among the people being held at gunpoint upstairs. Eventually, the Los Angeles police arrive, soon in ever-larger numbers, along with SWAT, state police, special units, and their own underused firepower. A cadre of media also arrives, with TV crews and satellite trucks beaming the unfolding drama live.

Though we know from decades of movies and TV well in advance the outcome of the drama—and because by the early 1980s the standard plot involving a single top-tier actor hero outwitting a platoon of ne’r-do-wells and armed hooligans almost always results in the good guy prevailing, Die Hard is anything but static or flat. One of its charms is the dynamic way the story unfolds, including unrevealed cards by our chief villain (among them the requirement that the FBI arrive, take over the operations of the police, and engage in a series of predictable forms of on-the-ground response), and the film’s unique gift for personalizing each of Gruber’s henchmen, typically just before they meet their demise at the hands of the streetwise McClane.

That McClane is outnumbered within the building—and the sometimes disturbing, often bumbling, inept, or ham-fisted actions by the police outside—makes little difference to us, the viewers: we know that McClane will almost singlehandedly prevail. It is simply a question of how, and how many bruises, cuts and wounds he will sustain in the effort. (The original story involves a four-day hostage standoff; director John McTiernan decided that a better device to keep the narrative moving quickly was to pack the entire story into a single night of action).

Though one could argue that the screenplay was retooled and rewritten to suit Willis, it becomes clear early in the film that Die Hard was a script ideal for his skillset as actor, especially his frequent deadpan hum and dry wit, along with his ability to morph easily into the role of the out-of-place, cynical sort of New York cop we love to respect: frustrated by bureaucrats, resistant to authority, chip on the shoulder, occasionally hung-over, always one written memo away from suspension from the force. These factors both charm and repel his wife, but also suffice to sow confusion and disarray among the chilly, disciplined minions among Gruber’s team—including Karl (played by Alexander Godunov), Gruber’s principal and most fearsome lieutenant.

No spoiler alert needed: in the end McClane saves the hostages, foils or kills the terrorist-thieves, saves his wife, and saves his marriage as well.

Filmed almost entirely within—and among the adjacent streets surrounding—the still-under-construction 20th Century Fox tower in the Century City area of Los Angeles, many scenes include the very real backdrop of interior construction, including dusty concrete floors, stacks of ceiling tile or plywood, cans of paint, tile, and the random mess of extension cords and tools. Much of the exterior mayhem was shot in the wee hours, and the peripheral damage to glass, aluminum, streel and shrubbery required complex talks between the subsidiary of 20th Century Fox which owned the brand new property, and the production team itself. Unlike a movie set on the back lot, this building was intended for corporate, white collar uses—not to serve as a platform for violent mayhem. Nevertheless, Fox execs acquiesced to having the explosive movie shot within, and around, the gleaming new building.

The famous, climatic series of helicopter shots became a potential legal and safety quagmire for all involved—including months of negotiations and planning between the city, state, and federal authorities, and much legal hand-wringing in the long, toxic aftermath of the infamous and grisly helicopter accident which occurred during the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1982. That calamity had taken the life of Vic Morrow and two child actors, and had resulted in an eight-month trial for director Jon Landis and four others, along with years of litigation between various parties and millions paid out in settlements. 20th Century Fox was not willing to take such risks, and those final scenes required the clearing—for about a three block radius and on the roof of the building—any and all persons who were not essential to the filming of the chopper sequence. Furthermore, a bevy of agencies insisted that shooting be executed and completed in less than 120 minutes—little time for mistakes or reshoots.

Rickman (head bad guy Gruber) so easily fills the screen and so completely fits the role as the chief villain that he nearly, but not quite, steals the film from Willis. The choice of Rickman as evil foil was risky in itself: Rickman had never done a major motion picture, and was—like Willis—deemed a lightweight for the critical part. In fact, this relative entry level parity between the principals helped to assuage for audiences any lopsidedness (think of Michael Keaton as Batman opposite Jack Nicholson as The Joker; Keaton holds his own, but barely). But Rickman plays the part so well that it became, for better or worse, one of his defining moments as an actor. His portrayal of Gruber makes for one of the most chilling and sinister bad guys in fiction, for he is at once charming, sophisticated, educated, and exceedingly well-dressed and groomed, but he is meticulous, exacting, and hardly troubled by the mass death count he intends to inflict merely to cover his tracks.

Willis not only took the part of the grouchy, cynical, McClane and ran with it, literally—he also made the part a transformative moment in his career, the hinge upon which he was catapulted to the top of the list. And if Die Hard was his breakout moment, as many film historians have suggested, Die Hard also served him well by not forcing him into a more-or-less permanent niche: the movie had enough humor, irony and combative wordplay (the kind of stuff that had served him well in Moonlighting) to simply allow him room for expansion, without the sight gags and hard physical pratfalls of his previous film, Blake Edwards’ Blind Date (1987).

Die Hard is not without its flaws. Among the most notable, and at times irritating: the immense blockheaded stupidity of many of its primary characters, notably the deputy chief of police (played by Paul Gleason), local TV reporter Richard Thornburg (played with an over-the-top arrogance by William Atherton), and Ellis, a top financial wiz and dealmaker with Nakatomi with a penchant for cocaine and Rolex watches. All three characters, presumably “good guys” in the sense that they are not in league with the terrorists, do more harm than good at nearly every turn. The top FBI agents, likewise, seem incapable of nuance or understanding, turning to “scenarios” and their rulebook for each move. This makes so many of the primary characters into such cartoonish idiots that it quickly defies reality, even for a place like Los Angeles.

This oddity also lends brains and credibility and cache to the real villains bent on stealing cash and eventually killing all the hostages; one feels a closer connection to Gruber than to the deputy chief of police, or to the overconfident, smug FBI agents.

Flaws aside, the film opened to rave popular success, if not some mixed critical reviews. Released to limited showings on July 15, 1988, then everywhere else on July 20, Die Hard quickly recouped its $28 million budget, breaking even within just two weeks and eventually pulling in more than $140 million by the end of the year. Theaters were packed almost from the start, but word-of-mouth reviews drew even larger audiences over the next weeks. The film gained momentum on the strength of the positive audience reviews, even as a few critics panned the movie and others embraced the picture’s basic action enjoyment. Overnight, Willis had become a top star, and Rickman had been thrust into the consciousness of the wider movie-going public.

Though it would spawn a long series of sequels, none would surpass the first (though some viewers consider 1995’s Die Hard With a Vengeance, the third in the franchise, to be a close rival of the first). Die Hard’s true legacy would come in the form of the innumerable variations and knock-offs, and within the film industry and within Hollywood screenplay circles where then—and forever more—comparisons would be made to other “terrorists holding hostages” screenplays, as in “Die Hard on a Boat” to refer to Under Siege, or “Die Hard in the Rockies” to refer to Cliffhanger. The formula was so profitable it was used to excess, eventually extinguishing itself in the Aught Years, though recent attempts to reboot it have met with modest success (see the aforementioned Skyscraper).

Die Hard also temporarily killed the “disaster movie,” a genre which would make its comeback only after digital effects and computerized imaging tools gained full traction in the 1990s. Those special effects wrought their own form of wide screen inundation through meteors, asteroids, floods, plagues, and crafty, long-dead Mayans.

Still, no cataclysm from the sky or sea or wind can trump our grimy, sooty, cynical officer McClane, the tough NY cop willing to leap off of high rise rooftops, jump down elevator shafts, shimmy through air conditioning vents, and run through broken glass—all in bare feet and a JC Penney undershirt.

Related Thursday Review articles:

Superman: The Movie at 40; R. Alan Clanton; Thursday Review; March 1, 2018.

Planet of the Apes at 50 Years Old; R. Alan Clanton; Thursday Review; June 1, 2018.