Thursday, July 8, 2010

The Die Hard Movies Reviewed

Die Hard Collection (Die Hard/ Die Hard 2: Die Harder/ Die Hard with a Vengeance/ Live Free or Die Hard) [Blu-ray]
Die Hard Collection
By Avis Buchanan

Die Hard movies pretty much set the bar for action movies in the nineties. They are over the top, based almost entirely on the action, and aren't meant to be taken too seriously. But with the advent of the newest movie, it is easy to see that their time has passed. John McClain is probably ready to be retired.

The first of the movies has John going against a charmingly evil Alan Rickman in a building in downtown LA. He tries to get help the whole time, and it is easy to see that he is just a man who doesn't really want to be where he is and is trying to get someone else to come over and help him out the whole time. Eventually he just has to do it himself, but he tries to get help. And that is important to his character.

The second movie takes place in and around an airport. It gets a little silly, as John again just happens to be there and the bad guys have a plan that is evil yet probably not as well thought out as it could have been. In the end it is foiled by a single man on a runway with a torch.

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 takes on most of the nation. John goes from being a cop on a certain beat to having to try to be everywhere and stop a national crises. He also has seemed to gain super powers, going from a guy who is hard to kill to a guy that can take out a helicopter by speeding through a tunnel. Of course he gets up and walks away after doing that, and the movie starts to lose some of its mystic.

These movies work best when they are done a little smaller. Why not have John go up against a small group of determined individuals on smaller scale? Why not let him fight by hiding in the air ducts and sneaking around with a stolen assault rifle? This is why people fell in love with the series, not just the over the top nature of them.

Ultimately it is just a difference in the styles of the time. A couple of decades ago it was okay to show an average guy in an unusually situation. Now, with the advent of super-hero movies and an ability to do more with special effects, every action movie is made with an eye to massive explosions and not to making a good underdog story.

Die Hard movies are never going to go away. People will still want to watch them for many years to come. There just comes a time when a new one can't do justice to the franchise anymore. John McClain needs to retire and Bruce Willis can do other outlandish action movies in its place, and that way everyone will be happy.

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