12 Films of Christmas: Die Hard

As we make our way toward Christmas Day, we asked Movieline DVD Editor Alonso Duralde to share a dozen of his favorite movies from his new book, Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas (Limelight Editions). We'll be running his excerpts from the book all the way to December 25. Up first, you're invited to a holiday party at Nakatomi Plaza.

Die Hard

New York cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) travels to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with estranged wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) and their children. Amidst the festivities at Holly's office party, terrorist Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his accomplices show up to hold everyone hostage and to demand the release of political prisoners around the world. Alas, terrorism is just a front for what turns out to be an exceedingly clever robbery, but the one thing Gruber didn't prepare for was the presence of McClane.

In its own way, Die Hard is as perfect a movie as Casablanca, blessed with a standout cast of character actors and one of the smartest action-movie scripts ever written. Screenwriters Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza pepper the film with quotable lines and the kind of payoffs you'd expect in a perfectly-timed French farce. Best of all, Gruber's robbery plans are not only brilliantly crafted, but they also make perfect sense. Die Hard was the first film that gave Willis a character that perfectly fit his on-screen persona, but it's Rickman's dangerously cosmopolitan villain who steals the show. And even the Christmas setting isn't a throwaway -- in the classic tradition of Christmas-movie leading men, John McClane undergoes a sort of redemption, learning to appreciate his wife and to see her in a new light. Oh, and the climactic shootout involves gift wrap.

Fun Facts:

By the late '80s, co-stars William Atherton (who plays a smarmy TV journalist) and Paul Gleason (as a useless police officer) were already famous as two of the screen's greatest smug jerks; Atherton was the foil to the Ghostbusters in 1984, while Gleason was the obnoxious principal who tormented The Breakfast Club (1985).

The scene where Gruber fools McClane into thinking that he's one of the hostages was added during production after director John McTiernan realized that Rickman could do a killer American accent. And the surprised look on Rickman's face when he takes a fall toward the end of the film is genuine; McTiernan had the actor dropped a second early, which infuriated Rickman.

Some theaters pulled the Die Hard trailer in the spring of 1988 because audiences -- who apparently weren't big fans of Willis' two previous movies, Sunset and Blind Date -- booed whenever Willis appeared on screen. Willis got the last laugh, though, with Die Hard becoming a huge hit during the same summer that new action movies from Sylvester Stallone (Rambo III), Arnold Schwarzenegger (Red Heat), Clint Eastwood (The Dead Pool) and Sean Connery (The Presidio) all tanked.