Die Hard

John McClane (Bruce Willis) is flying from New York to California to meet up with his wife for the Christmas Holidays. His wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), works for the Takagi Corporation and Mr., Takagi (James Shigeta) is throwing a huge Christmas bash in his building and he actually sends a limo out for John. The driver Argyle (De'voreaux White) and John have a conversation and we find out that the married couple are separated because she followed her job to California and John didn't want to leave the NYPD.

As the party gets going, the building is taken over and locked down by an East German terrorist group lead by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman). The party guests are rounded up but John manages to get out and tries to contact the police by pulling the fire alarm. Unfortunately the terrorists are well organized and call the police telling them it was a false alarm.  John kills one of the men, and takes his machine gun, leading the terrorists on a merry chase around he building.

Contacting the police again, John manages to convince them to send a car over, and drops a body of another terrorist on the cop car. Sgt. Al Powell (Reginald Vel Johnson) reasons that it isn't a prank call and calls in the cavalry. The two of them communicate with each other via a short wave radio that, unfortunately,  can be overheard by the terrorists. As the police arrive and mess things up, John continues to be nuisance to the terrorists. They, on the other hand are getting closer to their goal. The tech guy has cut through six of the seven locks on the vault, but he's worried about the last one, considering it's electromagnetic (or something). Hans has no worries and he calmly waits for the FBI to show up. He knows that as soon as the FBI arrive they will cut the power to the building and the last lock will be disengaged. And that is exactly what happens. The vault is opened and they grab the $6 million worth bonds (don't forget this was in the 80's).  They send the hostages to the roof were the FBI are supposed to land and which is rigged to explode. John tries to warn the FBI but they don't listen, so he has to go up there himself only to find out that Holly isn't there.  By this time Hans has figured out that Holly is John's wife and has brought her down to the vault with them.

John gets all the people off the roof, but the FBI thinks he's one of the terrorists and shoot at him; he jumps off the building, attached by a fire hose and prays like hell. Surprisingly he doesn't die when it explodes, or when the helicopter that the FBI have blows  up and crashes into the building.  John races down to the 30th floor, well as much 'racing' as he can do considering how banged up, cut up and shot up he is, but he manages to save Holly and they drive off together in the Limo that was parked under the building the whole time. Man I hope they tip him well.

This movie is awesome even considering how old it is. Bruce Willis is just perfect in the role of McLane and Vel Johnson is always excellent. I will always love Alan Rickman as a villain, he plays them so well, the only problem I had was with his British accent. The guy is supposed to be German and he's got an English accent. They could have made him British, considering there was a Italian running around in there crew, it wouldn't been that  farfetched.

The other problem I had with this movie was how stupid the tertiary characters were, The chief of police Robinson (Paul Gleason) was pathetic, don't they have to serve on the force for a bit before they become the Chief? And what was up with the FBI guys? They were such arrogant morons. They were like: "Yeah, international terrorists, no biggie, we'll be home for dinner. We'll just show up, do one thing and they'll be sweating in their boots 'cuz we're the FBI". Idiots. I'm glad they were blown up in the helicopter.

Other than that , this movie was awesome. I was shocked to discover that I had never seen it before, I was sure I watched it. Oh well, it was well worth the wait.  

Grade: 9/10