The Die Hard Movies Reviewed

Posted July 7, 2010 at 3:03 am

The Die Hard movies are prime examples of action in the eighties and nineties. They capture the humor and the craziness of action movies while not sacrifices some seriously good action scenes. The newest movie in the franchise was, for many people, a bit of a disappointment. That is, most likely, because it went a little bit too much over the top.

The first pits a single cop, John McClain, against a group of terrorists/robbers. The main bad guy, played by a very stylish Alan Rickman, is the perfect example of the over the top, pure evil bad guy that we like to see fall out of a window at the end of the movie. What is great is that even though John has to fight everyone on his own, he spends the whole movie trying to get anyone else to come and help him. This gives the movie a sense of realism, as well as telling us that John doesn't think he can really take out everyone on his own, even though that is what ends up happening, though it does happen largely through luck.

The second movie gets a little more outlandish. John happens to be at the site of another terrorists/robbery scheme and happens to be the one that is able to stop them before anything truly bad happens. He is a little more gung ho in this movie, but he still tries to get as much help as possible from anyone else who is around.

The third movie does a good job of being really over the top. There is a lot that is happening in the movie, and John is caught in the middle, although this time because the bad guy calls him out personally. Still, the movie is a good balance of humor and action and wasn't so over the top on action as to be ridiculous.

The fourth movie, though, takes the premise to an extreme that it didn't really need to go to. Suddenly John McClain is some sort of super hero that can take on all comers. There is some fun scenes and there are some cool looking shots, but really it boils down to a single person suddenly seeming to be able to do things that only the super powered would really be able to do in real life.

These types of movies work better when they are done on a bit smaller scale. They need to be done smaller. This isn't a super hero we are dealing with, this is an aging cop. John can't do everything, and the audience should know this. Regardless of how much people want to root for him, it is hard when he has become some sort of superman instead of just being a tough New York cop.

This is a great franchise, but it was a product of its time. Films have grown too much since the first one was made. Action movies are a lot bigger these days, thanks to the bigger budgets and the advent of better special effects. Die Hard movies were big action movies for their time, but their time has passed.

Die Hard is a great franchise. If it ends now, then it will always be remembered that way. But as filmmaking keeps getting bigger and bigger, it is going to turn into a movie that is about John McClain taking on an entire country while flying through the air on a jet pack. And it will be in 3d. There is just no need for that.