The "Die Hard" Franchise

[StevePulaski]

Die Hard (1988)
Directed by: John McTiernan

Bruce Willis slithers through an air-duct in Die Hard.

Rating: ★★★½

John McTiernan's Die Hard, like most great films, was probably never conceived to reinvent the wheel of its genre. I'm sure by the time shooting wrapped and post-production commenced, almost everyone involved was at the very least confident in the project they had invested time and money into. The $28 million flick then debuted in the middle of a hot summer in 1988 to strong reviews that only became more appreciative of its style and more generous in their praise of a taut and bold motion picture. The rest is history in the most rose-colored sense of the word.

One of the reasons Die Hard continues to make waves as one of the finest action films ever cut and released is due in part to how uniform it is in a quality-control sense. Few action movies even in the past could so laudably pull off what McTiernan and company accomplish in this unassuming feature. The answer lies in efficiency.

Let's start with the obvious: the screenplay by Jeb Stuart (The Fugitive) and Steven E. de Souza (Judge Dredd) is lean and mean. Mercilessly effective in inspiring suspense while still taking the time to set the scene and the stakes, Stuart and de Souza demonstrate efficiency in the strongest sense of the word when laying the groundwork for this actioneer. They understand that audiences need to be given souls and situations to care about in equal measures. Even if Bruce Willis' streetwise, New York cop John McClane is a little too lucky at times, and superhuman at others, it's his down-to-earth qualities that make him so relatable, so blue-collar. Consider when he gets to the roof of the Nakatomi tower upon learning its been hijacked by twelve terrorists led by a German ringleader named Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman). He commits the no-no of swearing on an FCC-monitored frequency, and when met with intense skepticism from dispatchers, who inform him that the frequency in-use is only for emergency phone-calls only, he responds with, "no f****** s***, lady, does it sound like I'm ordering a pizza?" Like a president making a March Madness bracket, or a CEO trying on the gear of his assembly line workers, you just can't get more empathy than that.

Adding on, Rickman's villain is on-par with his plan; both are buoyed by enough details to make you care about them. We understand not only the motivations of Gruber but also his process by the time the first act of the film concludes, and we recognize his desire to use police protocol during potential hostage situations in his favor. A cheaper action script might have the villain lazily using C-4 explosives to blast through a bank vault. Stuart and de Souza decide to take a more clever route, setting up the vault doors to be controlled by electromagnets that become disabled at the loss of power. It's one thing to suggest this, it's another to fearlessly and thoughtfully implement it in the script. The duo manage to pull off both; it's a little narrative point that gives the film that much more weight.

McTiernan is also very aware of his presentation and the labyrinth-like qualities that enormous skyscrapers possess. His work is liberating enough for cinematographer Jan de Bont (who would later go on to McTiernan's The Hunt for Red October and Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct) to make it visually clear and editors Frank J. Urioste and John F. Link to capture the Nakatomi building (the real-life Fox Plaza in Los Angeles) in a way that allows for a linear presentation. A premise like this is ripe for being discombobulating, capable of pulling the viewer into too many directions and fogging up their sense of placement within the story. Thanks to the capable editing hands of Urioste and Link, instead of being disorienting, Die Hard is great to look at and oft-exhilarating thanks to the dimension afforded to the large-scale sets and sequences.

But this is very much McTiernan's coaster to craft, and he does it in the way he knows best. High octane chases, explosive moments, and canted angles all get stirred into a melting pot of footage tailored to earn the acclaim it deserves. There are many memorable moments in Die Hard. Take the scene when Sgt. Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson in a role that could've been disruptive and manic but is instead the equivalent of a cherry atop a sundae) learns of the danger unfolding inside the Nakatomi building, and proceeds to reverse his police car backwards at whiplash-inducing speeds before rendering himself immobile. Or recall when McClane pitches a collection of live explosives down an elevator shaft from 30+ stories in the air, not realizing that backdraft has to go somewhere. Even comparatively smaller scenes such as when Gruber tries to pull a fast one on McClane by convincing him he's one of the hostages shows McTiernan's ability to conjure up tension by the very ambiance of a given scene. Regardless of the size of the scene, McTiernan is impressive, and his skills and camerawork rise to the occasion every time.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Die Hard's legacy is so strong for a number of reasons, but I'd like to think the reason it's so indestructible is due to the fact that its aesthetics are so strong and its filmmaking is so formidable. Even if you can't process it in a technical sense or explain it using the appropriate jargon, you can feel its effect on your mood and your senses. It stimulates the mind and engages just like a good action (or Christmas) movie should.

Starring: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia, Alexander Godunov, Reginald VelJohnson, Paul Gleason, and De'voreaux White. Directed by: John McTiernan.

[StevePulaski]

Die Hard 2 (1990)
Directed by: Renny Harlin

Rating: ★★★

Although I'll admit I'm not the first one to give them the time or day or indulge in their self-plagiarizing escapades, action sequels are often fascinating in their conceit. They usually follow their predecessors quite swiftly and borrow extensively from them as well, despite lacking a principle actor, director, cinematographer, or someone who helped make the original "worthy" of a follow-up. With that being said, after revisiting Die Hard to see if it held up (as foolish as that sounds as to anyone who has confirmed that with themselves time and time again), I was atypically primed to see Die Hard 2. How do you follow a happy accident in both a critical and financial sense and how do you do it so quickly?

Coming not even two years after the original John McTiernan tour-de-force, Die Hard 2 borrows extensively from its predecessor in hopes to produce the same (but different) experience once again. It takes place on Christmas Eve. The villains are a group of highly skilled terrorists. John McClane is still as invincible as Superman in some instances. And he's still not believed by men in power who wouldn't get a second interview for the job they're currently in if this series existed in the real-world™. Yet unlike the presence of derivative details and bumbling side-characters, Die Hard 2 is an acceptable, competent sequel even if it doesn't double down on surprise and the direction doesn't have that previous swagger.

Die Hard 2 opens with Bruce Willis' McClane arriving at Washington Dulles International Airport awaiting the arrival of his wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), who is arriving from LA. Upon having his car towed for being parked in an unauthorized zone, McClane's rough holiday continues on the two-year anniversary from the incident at the Nakatomi Tower. He gradually learns the presence of a former Army colonel named Stuart (William Sadler), who along with a group of henchmen, take control of the airport's air-traffic control systems and breach all direct communication with active flights. Men set up shop in a church, and make their demands clear: they want a vicious drug kingpin and dictator (Franco Nero of Django fame) released and cleared in lieu of his trial. Intercepting and seizing control of a plane would be the ideal method of escape, so they have Dulles go dark and keep all flights circling in the air as they run out of fuel — including the one with Holly on board. McClane leaps back into go mode, working with an incompetent police captain (Dennis Franz) and an airport director (Art Evans) in order to reinstate law and order.

Also returning are William Atherton, whose contemptible Dick Thornburg is traveling on the same plane as Holly, and Reginald VelJohnson, reprising his role as the resourceful Sergeant Al Powell, always eager to assist McClane in a pinch. Both men add familiarity to the film in the favorable sense of the world.

Let's get the notable shortcomings out of the way. Colonel Stuart is no Hans Gruber and William Sadler's serviceable villain shenanigans are not close to matching the air-raising ways of Alan Rickman in what could reasonably be described as one of his best performances. Furthermore, there's the inescapable feeling of familiarity that washes over the film that didn't exist in the original. When McClane narrowly escapes danger or gives Franz's Captain Lorenzo a snarky response, we don't admire it nor laugh the same way we did when he was mouthing off to 911 dispatchers while desperately trying to get help to the Nakatomi Tower.

But all of this could very well make up the details of a black-and-white warning title card that would find its place before every subsequent action movie sequel. Die Hard 2 delivers the entertainment value at least I believe it should; where it succeeds is in giving us two hours of rollicking action sequences that further establish John McClane as a credible hero and Bruce Willis as a passionate actor when comfortable in the right role. Notably missing from this sequel, however, are the style-points that are the nuances as to why Die Hard is as beloved as it is. Director Renny Harlin's (whose catalog consists of Cliffhanger, Deep Blue Sea, and the fourth Nightmare on Elm Street sequel) camerawork is at times slick, and in certain moments — such as when McClane ejects himself from a grenade-filled plane — precise and stylish. But it doesn't match the way McTiernan's turned a vertical structure into a winding, entrapping labyrinth of dead-ends and mystifying catacombs. Yet if all action films had as much style and flair as Die Hard and Die Hard 2, perhaps my motivation to seek out the myriad of sequels I've been missing would be a bit higher.

Die Hard 2 is a good follow-up, workable, taut, and kept afloat by Willis' gruff exterior, Franz's eminently hard-headed, incorrigible, personality, and Harlin's willingness to try and keep an emphasis on the visuals. Some sequels take what could've been a terrific franchise and have all their standards and promise plummet into an abyss of mediocrity. Some are burdened by ultimately trying to capture lightning in a bottle and do so in a bumbling manner. Few surpass the level of quality set forth by their superiors. Die Hard 2 makes its case to exist to the point where it's possible to forget we're watching the same movie twice.

Starring: Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, Dennis Franz, William Sadler, William Atherton, Art Evans, Reginald VelJohnson, and Franco Nero. Directed by: Renny Harlin.

[StevePulaski]

Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)
Directed by: John McTiernan

Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis in Die Hard with a Vengeance.

Rating: ★★★★

Throughout my review of Die Hard 2, I talked about why I'm not always quick to watch sequels to action movies. Generally, they're films that were never planned to be made but came about because their predecessors were such unexpected successes. Die Hard 2 came not even two years after the original stormed on the scene in 1988, and with a new director and a new villain, unconnected to the notorious Hans Gruber, it felt stylistically different. Die Hard with a Vengeance, the third film in the franchise, sees director John McTiernan returning to the series just in time, as if he saw the first sequel and not only felt underwhelmed but compelled to barge into a studio meeting and implore higher-ups that he was indeed ready to come back and do it right all over again. And he did.

Die Hard with a Vengeance is all you want, need, and crave in an action film rolled into one whip-smart, highly energetic two-hour package that's never boring. On top of being a testament to the incredible potential of its genre, the film is a fantastic showcase of all that McTiernan does well and had done well for many years. Die Hard with a Vengeance feels like one long, graceful montage that slickly moves from scene-to-scene, giftwrapping intelligence and suave filmmaking style in with an unapologetic desire to entertain on every level from the playful to the cerebral.

The film opens on the typically bustling streets of Manhattan with the ordinary day being disrupted by a horrifying bombing of a large department store. Moments later, the NYPD are running around their office trying to find answers and leads only to have the culprit come to them on the phone and request the notorious John McClane (Bruce Willis). In the present, McClane is a broken-down shell of himself; a boozehound separated from his wife that has been physically drained by two life-threatening instances. The aforementioned coordinator of the bombings is a disembodied voice named Simon (Jeremy Irons), who involves McClane in a game of "Simon Says;" failure to cooperate and play along will result in more innocent people dying. Simon's first order to McClane is to have him stand on a Harlem street-corner with an offensive statement; his life only saved from the understandably angry passersby by a local store-owner named Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson). In a hasty getaway, McClane ropes Zeus into a cat and mouse game that has the two men running around the streets of New York City, diffusing bombs and saving the lives of strangers who are none the wiser.

McTiernan doesn't let this third go-around miss a beat. Renny Harlin, who helmed Die Hard 2, brought about a commercial slickness to his production, but couldn't quite emulate the appropriate confidence and visual-style that only McTiernan could produce. The camerawork, canted angles and all, is back to being smooth, while the action is confident and reassured.

But one of the most innovative steps forward Die Hard with a Vengeance takes is how it subverts our expectations of John McClane. The broken-down, hard-luck action hero is not a new trope, per se, but seeing McClane clearly battered and bruised, figuratively and literally, over all that's transpired over the last several years is far more surprising than it would be for most protagonists. Where Die Hard and its sequel positioned McClane in a place of danger yet firmly established his strong self-awareness and physical prowess, the third installment puts him at the mercy of Simon. For once, our trusted hero looks and feels scared, not to mentioned hampered by a nagging hangover and working alongside someone in whom he doesn't believe. Seeing McClane narrowly escape death and peril now seems less incredulous and more like sheer luck — a subtle detail that the first sequel and Harlin couldn't quite pull off. It all felt more like a superhero movie.

Samuel L. Jackson's Zeus is a superb fit as well. The two men come from different backgrounds, both clearly strong and respected in their own line of duty, but are often entrapped in what always seems to be a potentially incendiary display of racial prejudice, particularly from Zeus' intense skepticism of white people and their intentions. Even more risky than making McClane notably weaker, the danger for screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh (who wrote the film as a spec-script called "Simon Says," and later went on to write Armageddon, another Bruce Willis vehicle) is mishandling race relations and racial bias in a film that admittedly doesn't need it. It's an extraneous element for sure, but it makes for strong banter between two cocksure personalities brought to life by great performers.

Hensleigh's balance of intelligent mystery and kinetic action is also pretty terrific. One moment, we're puzzle-solving how to get exactly four gallons of water with only a three-gallon and five-gallon drum, and another, we're riding a dump-truck out of a ginormous pipe. Finding an action film willing to let audiences assume an active role in problem-solving is rare, and Hensleigh and McTiernan do one better and create an equitable twofer in making their project embrace the fun that is now inherent to Die Hard films. This is how you do it, folks.

Die Hard with a Vengeance is a two-hour romp that races past, injecting wit, nuance, and suspense into the narrative. Those elements are three things you'd be hard-pressed to find in many action movies, let alone the third in a series. Die Hard with a Vengeance delivers — with a vengeance.

Starring: Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Irons, Graham Greene, Colleen Camp, Larry Bryggman, and Sam Phillips. Directed by: John McTiernan.

[StevePulaski]

Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Directed by: Len Wiseman

Bruce Willis.

Rating: ★★½

Be it Rambo, Prom Night, Indiana Jones, or The X-Files, no storied franchise was safe in the late aughts, including Die Hard, which saw itself rebooted with Live Free or Die Hard in 2007. Before it actually found a way into existence, it was actually a little difficult to imagine a franchise as wry and as unapologetically 80s and 90s as Die Hard making a comeback. The series resonated because its slickness came not always from its action sequences but in the attitude and demeanor of its hero, John McClane. Rebooting it in 2007, during a time when glossy superhero films were about to captivate audiences on a regular basis and action films became grittier — not to mention when horror films began looking a lot like action films — Die Hard was destined to become caught up in old habits and modern ways. Curiously, its premise took that memo as well.

Live Free or Die Hard does the most logical thing it could've done, and that's transplant the Die Hard formula into a world that's not only passed John McClane up, but lapped him a few times just to show off. Computers and technology have become integral parts in our personal lives and other industries, but McClane has seemingly lived in a bubble — one that houses middle-aged ennui, a battered hero complex, and a daughter (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) that wants little to do with him. His calling comes, yet again, unexpectedly when the FBI responds to a series of cyber-attacks on the United States' most vital infrastructures and needs McClane to help find the hackers. McClane, knowing next to nothing about computer hacking, enlists in the help of Matt Farrell (Justin Long), an experienced technological troublemaker who earned his clout by finding a spot on the "watchlist" for hackers in the U.S.

The attacks — which involve intercepting broadcast communication towers, taking control of vehicles, and destroying all remnants of social order — are coming from Thomas Gabriel, or Timothy Olyphant doing his best Michael Shannon impression. Gabriel is a disillusioned former analyst for the Defense Department, now leading a group of cyber-terrorists hellbent on inciting a "fire sale," which is just a fancy name for a coordinated, broad-scale attack on all computerized systems. Working with his girlfriend, Mai Linh (Maggie Q), Gabriel fends off our two heroes as McClane tries to teach a soft Matt to hardened up and Matt tries to act as a Band-Aid and a competent accomplice to McClane by attempting to remain one step ahead of Gabriel's unpredictable actions.

Formula and convention wouldn't be so popular if it didn't work on some level, and admittedly, screenwriter Mark Bomback's (Godsend, later The Wolverine) decision to posit a millennial-boomer conflict at the core of this film is a fun one. His move presents a stark, if caricatured, context between 80s/90s macho actors and present-day geeks who earn their stripes clacking a keyboard, learning to define themselves by bringing peace or causing calamity with just a few keystrokes. Bomback too employs some bits of McClane reflecting on his life as the reluctant hero; the one who always ran towards a bomb in an airport or continued to solve riddles by running around Manhattan with a stranger — for reasons he still probably couldn't coherently answer to this day. One particular bit leads Matt to be confronted with a reality so far and foreign from him, he has difficultly understanding where McClane is coming from, but we can tell he feels something during their little exchange, which counts even in the big picture.

The look of Live Free or Die Hard is decisively contemporary. The explosions both look and feel louder, with more photorealism (not that those in the past installments ever appeared the opposite — just not this polished) and a clear desire to be more excessive than ever before. Consider a scene where McClane manages to avoid Mai Linh and her mob of people, who try to bring him down as he flies through a long, dimly lit tunnel. McClane, of course, escapes, but not before tuck-and-rolling out of his vehicle, which reaches speeds of at least 60 mph as it flies up a ramp and collides into an airborne helicopter, causing both to explode. "You killed a helicopter with a car," Matt yells at McClane. "I ran out of bullets," he claps back.

Bomback and his screenplay are perpetually trying to outdo themselves every time there's a cut as opposed to sticking with a smart, nimble concept — something that led me not only to admire Die Hard with a Vengeance but love it enough to call it the best of the series. Foolish was anyone to expect this sequel/reboot coming 12 years later to mimic that film's intelligence and craft, especially without John McTiernan in the director's seat; but hopeful was anyone to anticipate a film just as smart as the previous three.

Live Free or Die Hard doesn't build to a climactic finale. It is a climactic finale. Its entire 129 minute runtime could be considered an extended action sequence, with the dialog-driven lulls in between the narrative simply justifications for something cool about to happen. The film becomes tedious after a while because it doesn't really build towards anything exhilarating like the previous installments. It's the film equivalent of what your grandmother likely once said: "too much of a good thing is too much of a good thing."

As far as side-notes about the film go, I have quite a few. For one, I've always had a soft-spot for Justin Long as an amiable personality in his films, and he works here because he fits his role like a glove. Mary Elizabeth Winstead's Lucy McClane is also effective, despite how sparsely she's utilized. If there's any reason for yet another installment beyond what we already got in 2013 (don't worry; I'll get to that one shortly), it's to expand on her character and her relationship with her father; we only get a small, cliché taste of it here. Then there's Kevin Smith, who was working on an acting career during this time, appearing in this and that remarkably unmemorable romance flick Catch and Release, which also starred Olyphant), as a computer hacker — a fitting bit of comic relief and nothing more.

Live Free or Die Hard isn't the catastrophic continuation of a beloved series, but its existence isn't well-justified given how predictable and perfunctory much of the film feels. By the 90-minute mark, I was all but checked out. Funny how after I (and many others) basically groveled for something different following Die Hard 2 practically retracing its predecessor's steps, while now after the fourth film, I want to revert back to something resembling what I've come back for time and time again. Old habits die hard, that's for damn sure.

Starring: Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Maggie Q, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Cliff Curtis, and Kevin Smith. Directed by: Len Wiseman.

[StevePulaski]

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)
Directed by: John Moore

Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, and Sebastian Koch in A Good Day to Die Hard.

Rating: ★

A Good Day to Die Hard is one abysmal action setpiece after another, each one successfully chipping away all or most of the fibers of good taste and consummate craftsmanship that was so easy to find in the great franchise. Even with the uneven and divisively received Live Free or Die Hard six years prior, there was a film that had a rhyme to match its reason even when it gave into its premise's most chaotic tendencies. With the fifth go-around, no one was expecting Die Hard with a Vengeance or another film that would routinely be debated both as a Christmas movie and the best action film ever made. However, no one expected — nor should settle — for something this incorrigible.

"Downtrodden" is the best way to describe A Good Day to Die Hard. Director John Moore and screenwriter Skip Woods (Swordfish) have sucked the life out of everything that made the Die Hard franchise so witty and nimble. They broke a streak of engaging films, which required an active mind to absorb their often kinetic style which worked to build a good mystery in addition, by distilling all the flavor out of the series. It's as if having Chef Emeril make a delectable shrimp scampi only to then strain the butter and garlic oil out of the bowl and replace it with bathwater. Bloated by an infuriating amount of senseless action, a weightless father-and-son dynamic, and a Bruce Willis who looks and moves as if he's simply tied of it all, A Good Day to Die Hard could hardly disappoint more if the filmmakers really approached the material with a determination to ruin it.

The film picks up on John McClane, the world's unluckiest cop, who after patching things up with his daughter (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who appears only in a cameo role here), decides to try to make right with his son. He travels to Moscow and finds Jack (Jai Courtney, Jack Reacher), who is facing murder charges, while a billionaire accomplice of his, Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch), wants to seize his own day in court by ratting out his partner-in-crime in lieu of a political promotion. McClane lands in Moscow at, you guessed it, the wrong time, causing Jack, who works for the CIA, to both the transport of Komarov to his coworkers. McClane, Jack, and Komarov are then wanted by Komarov's old comrade, who sends a host of henchmen to whack the three as they hide in the bustling Russian metropolitan.

A Good Day to Die Hard only knows one color palette and that palette is ugly. Nothing but drab grays, blacks, and browns hit the screen, making for what eventually feels like an assault on your delicate senses. If Die Hard and Die Hard with a Vengeance director John McTiernan, who marked his installments of the series with montages that would serve as gold standards for the genre as well as sublime cinematic techniques, sat through this mess and didn't vomit at what it became, I'd be stunned.

Cinematographer Jonathan Sela and Moore are workmanlike. They evidently have little interest in retaining the visual hallmarks of this great franchise, and are keen on letting it look and move like an obligatory Russian-set thriller we get in America several times over, any given year. Moore's sloppy camerawork makes editor Dan Zimmerman's job hell to try and get this film to remain coherent — all hope of that is lost within the first 20 minutes, as the film starts way too fast, introduces too many new faces all at once, and employs the fastest-moving subtitles I've yet to see in an American film. It's ostensibly a coordinated effort to see how quickly the audience can be confused and an endurance test of patience that begs you to jump-ship. Moore, who has directed Max Payne and The Omen remake, two franchise-potential films that sputtered long before this film hit theaters. Five years later, there still has yet to be another Die Hard film. See what happens when you hire a journeyman to be put in charge of helming a potential new commodity?

Back to the writing. Woods seems disinterested in making McClane who McClane is and has been for the better part of four decades now. His verbal slickness has been traded for physical prowess, resulting in McClane looking like a video-game character incapable of great injury or death. This move compounds one of the larger problems present in Live Free or Die Hard. And then there's the fact that the character has all but become John Rambo, always looking to solve a problem with the use of an assault rifle. McClane is more trigger happy than Paul Kersey if he had access to a drug-lord's arsenal. Gone is a quick-on-his-feet McClane who would solve riddles and run through the streets of New York despite a nagging hangover. He now moves and operates like he'd be hard-pressed to walk ten feet for another Busch Light.

Throughout the film, one can see Bruce Willis isn't having it anymore. This was a franchise that treated him well for three films before being hastily revived and subsequently degraded by removing everything it was and replacing it with everything it was not. Now, Willis is forced to function with daddy issues being his primary personal conflict; a subplot so unconvincingly handled it begs a new Razzie category for most shamelessly employed cliché. Where Willis would normally function in this role with the poise necessary to make it believable, he flounders, and Jai Courtney can't pick up the slack because it's the equivalent of a hangnail. The two have no credible chemistry with one another, and watching their contentious banter is contrived as a result.

A Good Day to Die Hard is unspeakably, mercilessly bad. A dismally conceived noise-fest effectively undermining a great franchise and an action movie savant, the fifth installment in the franchise at least lives up to its title in some sense. It's a good day to let Die Hard pass on.

Starring: Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Rasha Bukvić, Yuliya Snigir, Cole Hauser, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Directed by: John Moore.