Yippee-Ki-Yay Featureshocker!
Before the 24-hour shenanigans of Jack Bauer, there was another all-action american hero who kept having a bad day. His name? John McClane. A New-York detective with a no-nonsense attitude, John McClane, played by Bruce Willis, was an ordinary guy who kept getting caught up in extraordinary situations.
The first film, Die Hard (1988), had our hero attending a christmas party in Los Angeles at his estranged wife’s workplace, Nakatomi Plaza. It’s not long before he’s having yet another argument with his wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) but the reunion is short-lived as the building is hijacked by a german ‘terrorist’ gang led by the charismatic ‘Hans Gruber’ (portrayed brilliantly by Alan Rickman). McClane manages to slip away (barefooted) and their plans are turned upside down as John McClane shows them what “just another American” can do.
The film was hugely successful when it was released - becoming the archetypal action movie since then - and sparking a re-interest in the action genre and being responsible for the surge in subsequent action/thriller movies, with their central premise of lone action heroes taking on terrorists.
Directed by John McTiernan, the film was actually based on the 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever written by Roderick Thorp - and though there were expected changes (such as character names and updating), the film is pretty faithful to the novel.
A sequel was always going to happen with such a commercially successful movie, and so there was Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990). This time John McClane is at Dulles Airport in Washington on Christmas Eve waiting for his wife’s plane when - you might have already guessed - the place is hijacked, this time by rogue American army Colonel Stuart (William Sadler) and his cohorts. This sequel was also based on a novel, 58 minutes by Walter Wager, and was directed by Reny Harlin. The film was generally well received (and financially successful) but lacked the first film’s commercial success, mostly because it bears too much similarity to the first film’s premise.
Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) is the third film in the franchise, and is again directed by John McTiernan. John McClane is on his home turf of New York this time around, drawn into a cat-and-mouse game with a ‘Simon says’ bomber. Having to play along with ‘Peter Krieg’ (Jeremey Irons) who is in fact ‘Simon Peter Gruber’ - the brother of Hans Gruber - McClane finds out that this is more than just a question of revenge for the terrorist as he plans to rob the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Also in the film is Samuel L Jackson as ‘Zeus Carver’, an ordinary guy who reluctantly teams up with McClane once he gets involved in the unfolding events. This too was a successful film, with John McTiernan directing in a suitably realistic and up-to-date gritty style.
The Die Hard franchise took a side-step after this third instalment, with video games involving John McClane appearing on various game platforms - Die Hard Trilogy (1996), Die Hard Arcade (1996/97), Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas (2000), Die Hard: Vendetta (2002/03), and Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza (2002).
After all this excitement you would expect John McClane to retire somewhere tropical, but alas he’s going to have another bad day. Live Free or Die Hard (called Die Hard 4.0 internationally) is the fourth film in the Die Hard series - released in 2007 and directed by Len Wiseman.
Taking place about 18 years after the events in first film, it has aging cop John McClane divorced and coping with drink problems. Tasked with picking up a young hacker ‘Matt Farrell’ (Justin Long) to take into custody, McClane finds himself caught up in a modern ‘cyber-terrorist’ attack as the computer infrastructure of the United States is targeted by a group of hackers led by disgruntled former government employee ‘Thomas Gabriel’ (Timothy Olyphant).
The storyline has had an obvious update, and considering the post 9/11 environment, is quite a different direction to take than the obvious ‘war on terror/extremism’ angle that most would’ve expected. The film will also be the first Die Hard to have a lower film-rating and thus be open to a wider audience, causing some to question such a move - but that may have more to do with the changes in criteria for film-ratings than the actual content of the film.
So, is this the final ‘bad day’ for John McClane? He’s not getting any younger it’s true, but he can still cause bad guys some serious trouble and laugh like a kid while doing it. What more do you need from an all-American hero?
Mo Ali was born in a haunted hospital and has exceeded all expectations and kept breathing.
A digital artist, poet and writer, he needs to find some paid work before the inevitable apocalypse. To make matters worse he lives in Berkshire.