Wednesday, December 23, 2009

FOTM: "Now I have a machine gun. Ho-ho-ho."


‘Twas the week before Christmas and that could mean only one thing, time to give my favorite holiday movie a quick fling.

Loaded with mayhem, action, explosions and holiday cheer, it’s just not Christmas if I don’t watch DIE HARD this time of year.

While many might snort and chuckle and call me a fool, to me there is no better film for this season of Yule.

On this grand action opus an exhaustive book I could write, but that is not what brings you to this blog this December night.

Confused and perplexed I’m sure your head you do scratch, how could this film be part of a holiday batch?

It’s quite simple you see, like two plus one is three.

The Christmas setting for the plot is essential, sans it you have a tree with nothing but tinsel.

From the terrorist plot to the way Willis hides his gun, all of it is for not if not for the holiday fun.

Christmas is laced through each part of the film, forged, mixed and joined in the creative kilm.

Tis Christmas that brings John McClane to the party, and makes the actions of the cops so fool-hardy.

With the city quiet and peaceful in a Christmas nap, the time is ripe and right for the terrorist trap to snap.

Being Christmas Eve all are caught off-guard and unaware, allowing Hans and his men to try a heist of such dare.

Enter an everyman - a hero for the ages, and for two hours plus through terrorists he rages.

The cops and the feds try to help but just get in the way, to that our lone hero would only say yippee-ki-yay.

McClane adorns dead terrorists in Santa hats and Christmas messages, twere not for the party alcohol would so docile be the hostages.

The action and tension raises and mounts, blood and led fly in copious amounts.


In the midst of it all a tale of a man yearning to regain his wife, all the while in a frantic, high-octane battle for his very life.

Forty stories of adventure hold us in awe; by the end from the floor must we remove our jaw.

From beginning to end it’s a white-knuckle ride, packed to the brim with subtext of blue collar pride

The film is genius, brilliant, pure action perfection, voted by many the greatest action selection.

At the time of its release a huge gamble and roll of the dice, it is now synonymous with all that makes action movies nice.

Its lead was a TV star as of then untested, its villain so dapper in a suit double-breasted.

In one shining moment a new movie star was made, guaranteed from your memory this movie won’t fade.

Even Michael Kamen’s score is filled with Christmas cheer, the only thing missing are Santa’s eight tiny reindeer.

While most holiday movies have peace on earth and good will towards men, this one has Twinkies, explosions, machine guns and Alan Rickman amen!

You can keep your stockings, holly sleigh bells and missile toe, I get my holiday cheer watching McClane jump off the roof as it does blow.

Smart, ground breaking, original and fun in all ways, you just don’t see many films like DIE HARD now-a-days.

So in closing I think you’ll find no Christmas movie to be rougher or tougher, and if you find you don’t agree with me well then Yippee-ki-yay mother…

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Me too, I also watch this along with the original Lethal Weapon and Black's more recent entry into the holiday action film sub-genre- Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang as mentioned in the last entry on here.

Die Hard 2: Die Harder and Live Free or Die Hard (or Die Hard 4.0 as its known overseas)are solid action films if a bit flawed.

However, I think Die Hard With A Vegenence was the only sequel in the series to come close to matching the original. Though I credit that mainly to SLJ and Irons performances and the NYC setting.

Anonymous said...

It also worked for me because Die Hard 3's cat and mouse plot because took me back to the first one and McClaine trying to outwit the other Gruber brother.

Die Hard 2 while having a slight twist at the end was pretty straightforward and Die Hard 4 was more of the same. I still rank 4 above 2 though even if it does overdo it at the end with the action sequences.

I think a 5 is still a possiblity to be honest, as Willis is still young, in good shape, and likes the character. Not really sure what they'd do with it though?

1- Inside a 40 story skyscraper
2- Inside an airport
3- All across NYC
4- All across the east coast

I heard rumors that originally the last film was supposed to take place in the jungle without any explosives which I thought lame since it would be too much like Rambo.

I'm really not sure what they'd do to top the others aside from setting him loose in a foreign country but that would be kind of contrived and I'm sure people would complain it would be too much like that one season of "24".

GordonRBogard said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Chris W said...

Honestly I think in many ways DIE HARD 3 is just as good as the 1st one. I seriously feel it is one of the best, smartest action movies of all time. Every single part of it works. Willis and Sam Jackson are great together, Irons is awesomee and the whole plot is actually quie smart and makes sense. What's weird is that DIE HARD 3 was originally intended to be LETHAL WEAPON 4, how that was gonna work I have no idea.

Anonymous said...

Couldn't agree more, its up there with The Last Crusade in sequels that just clicked. Though, I find Crusade is more popular with some people than DH3.

I think I remember hearing that awhile back. I actually wasn't a fan of Lethal Weapon 4 so it might have worked just not as well as it did for McClaine. I'd get into the Lethal Weapon series but I'll wait until you get around to those on here.

Also, I'd delete this GordonRRBogard character as he looks like a spambot to me unless his account got taken over?