Die hard - 1988

Well, there's Alan Rickman in it and that's good; the rest is just the kind of action movie that was loved in those years I guess. The L.A. Police Department appears to be full of stupid people, and the FBI too for that matter, just better dressed to show they've got more money. When the troubles start and John McClane (Bruce Willis who will never get rid of him) uses some radio or whatever it was that was there for emergency calls, he gets this response: this line is for emergencies, if you have problems call 911 from your phone! What? Didn't she hear him talk about terrorists?!? Then there's shooting, so what does she do? She sends a policeman (one, alone in the car. I thought they were always supposed to work in pairs...) to check the building: he enters, looks around the empty atrium and goes away: everything's fine. What? John saw him get back in the car, which looked somehow distant, but when John throws out of the window the dead body of one of the criminals, it landed exactly on the car :-/ Now things get more serious, the whole department is mobilized and the chief is all: what do we know about him, he might be the terrorist himself... yeah right, and he called you all to have a bit of fun on Christmas' eve, I suppose. Anyway, he has to do it all by himself because neither the chief or the FBI are of any help. He gets beaten, shot at, he walks barefoot on a sea of broken glass, he shoots almost all of them dead, he blows up a part of the building, but the hero wins at the and and comes out walking on his own two feet... ooook :-/
Well, sense was not the primary target here, but all in all, take it for what it is, it's not too bad. The character though, is not in my favs list: he comes to L.A. full of rightful anger and hurt feelings, shouts at his wife for registering with her maiden name: Holly Gennaro instead of Holly McClane, but then we see the whole picture: he's a cop in New York, she got a big big job so she had to move to L.A. and he didn't go with her, didn't ask for a transfert, and acts like she left him. He could be a cop anywhere, she could only have a career in Los Angeles, so what, she should have given up everything to be home waiting for him? For how I see it, she did not leave him, he let her go, and proof is how she looks at him with adoring eyes, and the fact that it's him who wants to start a fight.
Yes, towards the end he has the decency to say sorry, yet not to her. So yes, saving her life was the least he could do... :-)


In  Italy: Trappola di cristallo