It may be difficult to anyone born after 1990 to fully understand just how trend-setting the summer of 1988 release of John McTiernan's crackerjack action flick Die Hard was.
There have been so many attempts to copy the film's winning formula of a lone-wolf protagonist embroiled in a violent battle of wills with terrorists in a confined geographic area (like Speed, aka "Die Hard On A Bus", Cliffhanger, aka "Die Hard On A Mountain", and perhaps funniest of all, the Jean Claude Van Damme epic Sudden Death, aka "Die Hard In A Hockey Rink"), that the original may now seem kind of old-hat. Quaint, even. Plus, Bruce Willis has been such a success in action movie roles over the last two decades that it's difficult to wrap one's mind around the fact that, in '88, coming off the screwball comedic TV series Moonlighting, the casting of Willis in a role originally earmarked for the then-surefire likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger must have seemed like far from a sure bet, especially when news of his then-absurd paycheck of $5 million was announced to the press. Five million bucks for the Seagram's Golden Wine Cooler guy?!
 But Willis immediately ingratiated himself to the filmgoing public as John McClane, an NYPD cop who lands in L. A. on Christmas Eve in order to meet his estranged wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) at her new job at the Nakatomi building. 40 stories high, the skyscraper towers above the L. A. skyline, making the proudly working-class McClane seem more emasculated as he meets with Holly during a holiday party for the Nakatomi employees in the building. John's certainly not happy that Holly has reverted back to her maiden name of Gennero, but has his latest argument with her is interrupted first by her having to make a speech to the other employees, then by a far more spectacular means: A group of German terrorists suddenly walk out of the elevator and start rounding up the terrified partygoers-turned-hostages. McClane (forced to leave his shoes behind) manages to escape capture by the skin of his teeth, and is left alone, desperate to contact the outside world (the terrorists cut off the phones early on) and figure out a way to rescue his wife. He also ends up matching wits with the terrorists' charismatic leader, Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman, making his film debut in the erudite, cultured role that turned him into one of Hollywood's most bankable screen baddies), whose reasons for taking the building are more complex than they originally appear.
 Luckily, McClane manages to attract the attention of a Twinkie-scarfing cop, Al Powell (future Family Matters dad Reginald VelJohnson), who quickly calls in the cavalry. Unluckily, they're under the supervision of the wildly inept Detective Chief Dwayne T. Robinson (the late Paul Gleason), who bungles about outside the building while the terrorists fortify their positions inside. Realizing he has to take matters into his own hands, McClane engages the terrorists in a game of cat and mouse, striking out at them then retreating into the maze of air ducts and elevator shafts, generating Hans' increasing ire at his intrusions into their well-laid plans ("You know me Hans, I'm just the fly in the ointment, the monkey in the wrench, the pain in the ass...").
 So what makes Die Hard such an endlessly re-watchable piece of pop action storytelling? Well, for one thing, McTiernan and co-screenwriters Steven E. De Souza and Jeb Stuart take great pains to set up the film's story, establishing John and Holly's fraying marriage, the building's geography, McClane's insouciant sense of humor ("Fuckin' California..."), well before the first gunshot is fired (which, amazingly, doesn't occur until 18 minutes of film have unspooled). Allowing the viewer to absorb, almost subliminally, the details of the eventual battlefield, McTiernan plays fair with the film's thrills. What was dubbed "Rambo in a building" by some critics at the time (I will never forgive Roger Ebert for his two-star review of this film) now seems every bit as stripped-down and elegant as an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, and as such, Die Hard has a queerly timeless feel to it. There are the obligatory fireballs, gun battles, and hand-to-hand slugfests expected from the genre, but Willis, with his receding hairline, wife-beater undershirt, and a cigarette perpetually jutting from the corner of his mouth, makes McClane a compellingly fallible hero, an ordinary guy swallowed up in extraordinary circumstances and improvising the best he can to turn the circumstances to his own advantage.
There's also the endlessly quotable screenplay peppered with choice Willis-isms ("Who's drivin' this car, Stevie Wonder...?"), the hissable villainy by Rickman and the late Alexander Godunov as his nastiest henchman, the supporting cast filled with vivid characterizations (William Atherton as a scuzzy reporter covering the crisis, Robert Davi and Grand L. Bush as the FBI agents Johnson & Johnson, "No relation", De'Voreaux White as the party-hearty limo driver who brought McClane to the Nakatomi building in the first place and is now trapped in the parking garage), and Richard Edlund's excellent Oscar-nominated special effects — Die Hard is a real meal, and despite it's 2+ hour running time, never feels needlessly padded with extraneous business. Despite it's three sequels (Live Free And Die Hard coming soon) and endless rip-offs, it remains a quintessential piece of '80s' action filmmaking, and a blast of escapist fun. Yippee-Kay-ay, indeed.
 DVD Presentation
20th Century Fox's 2001 DVD release (supplanting a poor, bare-bones 1999 version) still holds up with the best new discs being pressed today. Jan De Bont's excellent cinematography is gorgeously reproduced in its full, anamorphic 2:35 glory (this is a film that looks like ass when cropped) in a transfer that blows away every previous tape and laserdisc version of the title to date. The sound likewise is an excellent reproduction of the original six-track surround channel from the film's 1988 theatrical engagements, offering a thunderous sonic assault in both 5.1 Dolby Digital and DTS flavors (if your home theater is set up for the latter, you're in for a treat). There are also basic 2.0 stereo tracks in both English and French.
Extras
This two-disc set (produced under Fox's now-defunct "Five Star" line) has more than enough to satisfy Die Hard fans.
Disc One contains, in addition to the film, a pair of audio commentaries, one a full-length track with director John McTiernan (who sounds disturbingly like Dr. Zoidberg on Futurama) and production designer Jackson DeGovia (recorded separately), and the second a scene-specific track with special effects supervisor Richard Edlund.The first has a few nuggets of interest, but McTiernan's somnambulistic speaking voice sucks all the air out of the room. The second is more interesting, with Edlund going into detail about achieving the film's impressive effects in a pre-CGI world. There's also a subtitle trivia track that runs the full length of the film, although I've never been a fan of these. Trying to concentrate on the film and read the ticker-tape factoids at the bottom of the frame always gives me a migraine. Some might enjoy this more than I did, however.
Finally, there's the ability to watch a seamless branching version of the film with an additional scene edited back in (more on that later).
Disc Two has a number of extras under five separate submenus.
From The Vault offers an outtakes reel with a number of scene extensions, bloopers, and general Willis tomfoolery ("Oh you...a-stupid frankfurters...!"). this can be viewed either with the original production audio or with selections from the film's score (or, press right on the remote while highlighting the "music" selection and reveal a hidden gun. Click there, and watch the reel with only music). Also under the menu is the Turning Off The Power extended scene, wherein the first attempt to open the vault is unsuccessful, which causes Hans to tell techie terrorist Theo to "annoy" the FBI outside. This was thankfully simplified in the finished film. Also here are Newscasts, with raw video feed of the various TV broadcasts in the film (with additional dialogue and flubs), and a pair of interactive Magazine Articles which reproduced the text from a pair of 1988 issues of American Cinematographer and Cinefex, as well as offering imbedded pictures from said articles as well as film clips.
 The second menu is labeled The Cutting Room, which offers Scene Editing Workshop (use your remote to select various takes of three scenes in the movie, then play back a finished version. It's more clunky than it sounds), Multi-: Camera Shooting (various angles of police cars arriving at the Nakatomi Plaza), Audio Mixing (watch the "Shoot the glass!" scene and play around with the volume of the sound effects, dialogue and music), Why Letterbox? (a wonderful tutorial that plays a scene from the movie in both 2:35 widescreen and ugly pan & scan, a feature that should be included on every DVD), and Glossary (a still-frame collection of various film terms like "Extreme Close-Up" and the like).
The third submenu is the niftiest of the bunch, the Interactive Slideshow, which is an animated collection of various production and publicity stills from the film (set to selections from Michael Kamen's clever film score, which mixes his usual action licks with snatches of familiar Christmas carols and the "Ode To Joy" movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony) which is occasionally interrupted with a Nakatomi symbol at the bottom of the screen. Hit "enter" on your DVD remote when you see it, and you'll be taken to various goodies like set blueprints, deleted scene fragments ("What's that, Twinkie patrol?"), test footage of the remote-controlled miniature helicopters used at the film's climax, and more.
Submenu five is labeled The Script, and offers, you guessed it, the film's entire screenplay in a still-frame archive. Lastly, there's Ad Campaign, offering three theatrical trailers, 7 TV spots, and a 7:22 EPK featurette from '88 that's fairly skippable. While an in-depth documentary dissecting the film's production would have been appreciated, there's still plenty for fans of the film to chew on here.
Bottom Line
Die Hard, nearly two decades after the fact, remains the finest example of the action subgenre it helped create, the "Location-Specific" action flick, and it's impossible not to get involved in the narrative no matter how many times you've seen it. Get a TV dinner and a handful of Twinkies and enjoy.
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