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Not just a Christmas movie: DIE HARD on the big screen

Posted By bordwellblog On December 17, 2019 @ 4:07 pm In Directors: McTiernan,Film
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[1]

Die Hard (1988).

DB here:

It’s been quite a fall season [2] for UW–Madison film culture. There were visits from avant-garde
legend Larry Gottheim, New York Times co-chief film critic Manohla Dargis, Schawn Belston
(Senior VP of Mastering at Disney), and Julia Reichert, whose American Factory is now
routinely turning up on ten-best lists. The semester’s first screening at our Cinematheque was
Kiril Mkhanosvsky’s Give Me Liberty, a Milwaukee movie also gracing year-end best lists. Our
programs included restored films by African pioneer Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, retrospectives of
Reichert and Kiarostami, a 3D double feature of Revenge of the Creature and Parasite (no, the
other one), a program of early women directors in America, a selection of films conserved by the
Chicago Film Society, and a miscellany ranging from Olivia and Near Dark to Tropical Malady and
Red Rock West.

Travels to festivals, partly covered in our blog entries, forced us to miss too many of these
shows. But we couldn’t miss the final one: Die Hard (1988).

It’s a film I’ve admired since I first saw it in summer of 1988. I’ve taught it in many classes, but
never written about it. Seeing it again, in a pretty 35mm print from the Chicago Film Society,
has made me want to say a few things as my final blog entry for this busy year.
The man between

[3]

Think-piece pundits like to say that Hollywood movies are about good guys versus bad guys. But
usually things are more complicated. Very often the good guy is an outsider caught between two
large-scale forces, good or bad or both–the cattle ranchers versus the townspeople, or the mob
versus the cops. Often the protagonist is an outlier, forced to solve the problem using means
that respectable social forces can’t.

Call it the problem of the House Democrats. When the lawbreaker can’t be brought to justice,
how do you make him pay? The answer is one that William S. Hart movies provided in the
1910s. We need a “good bad man,” a rogue agent who knows the scheme from the inside but is
willing to do the right thing. Which means that he has to be flawed too, a little or a lot, and that
he can eventually reform.

In Die Hard, the forces of law and order line up as the Los Angeles police and the FBI. The threat
is Hans Gruber’s gang, posing as terrorists but actually planning to rob the Nakatomi
Corporation of $640 million in bearer bonds and kill lots of hostages in the process. The naive TV
broadcasters support both, recycling official scenarios of how hostage-taking works and
reinforcing the gang’s masquerade as a terrorist group.

The contrasts are marked. The forces of order are American, in alliance with a Japanese
company, while the attackers are Europeans. At the start, we hear American music (the rap
played by the limo driver Argyle), but Hans hums Beethoven. The cops’ technology notably fails,
as when the assault vehicle and a helicopter are consumed by firepower. But the gang’s hi-tech
expert Theo can crack the vault, assisted by Hans’ plan to push the Feds to cut the building
power.

Above all, the forces of social order are strikingly inept, while the gang is ruthlessly efficient.
Unlike the police, who “run the terrorist playbook,” Hans boasts that he has left nothing to
chance. The cops can’t imagine an adversary that exploits the official by-the-book procedures.
As for the business types, Takagi’s calm bluff and Ellis’s freewheeling jargon can’t cope with a
gang leader who doesn’t get the Art of the Deal.

Clearly, America and Japan need help. That appears in the form of John McClane, the cop from
the East Coast trapped in Nakatomi Plaza.
MacLane is the man between, spatially and strategically. He witnesses the action from inside the
skyscraper, and bit by bit he figures out the gang’s real scenario. And he’s caught between both
forces. The gang tries to find and kill him, while the cops refuse to recognize him as an ally.
Confronting Karl’s brother early on teaches McClane that he can’t play by procedure. (“There are
rules for policemen,” says a thug who doesn’t believe in rules.) The LAPD’s ineptitude shows that
McClane can’t expect help on that front. So he must become almost as reckless as his adversary,
though in a virtuous cause. This principally means blowing stuff up.

McClane isn’t totally alone. He has as helpers Al, the desk cop who comes on the scene and
sustains his morale, and Argyle, who’s there to play a crucial role at the climax. But mostly he’s
alone in facing problems. He needs weapons. He needs shoes. He needs to protect the hostages,
most of all his wife Holly, who has climbed up the corporate ladder. (In another movie, she would
be the in-between protagonist.) To keep Holly from becoming a bargaining chip, McClane needs
to hide his identity. And he needs to figure out the gang’s ultimate plan, of seeding the rooftop
with explosives that will destroy the building and cover their escape.

John’s solutions are notably low-tech. While the police and the gang depend on advanced
firepower and computer finagling, McClane lashes an explosive to a desk chair and uses a fire
hose as a rope. He has to improvise shoes by taping a maxi-pad to a bleeding foot. No holster
for your automatic? How about some Christmas wrapping tape? And don’t forget to taunt your
adversaries with Yankee wisecracks.

[4]

In the course of this drama, the very physical McClane becomes a model for his allies. Holly
punches the reporter who revealed John’s identity, and Argyle cold-cocks Theo at the point of
getaway. Most dramatically Al kills the revived Karl when he’s about to plug McClane. The people
in between take up arms.

McClane and his allies solve the House Democrats’ problem. Law can’t be lawless, even in
protecting itself. Business, always aiming at the bottom line, has to give up principles. (“Pearl
Harbor didn’t work out, so we got you with tape decks.”) These forces of social order are
inefficient, trusting, and superficial. They can’t stand up to sheer brutal onslaught. In a crisis
they will fold, or simply choose the nuclear option: agents Johnson and Johnson are ready to
lose a big chunk of hostages.

McClane is a mediating figure that permits the film to show you can be strategically lawless for
the sake of lawfulness. The fly in the ointment, the monkey in the wrench, screws up plans on
both sides, but for the benefit of everyone else.
The Big Dumb Action Picture isn’t so dumb

[5]

This thick array of thematic parallels would be interesting in itself, but it gets worked out through
precise storytelling. There was a time when critics knocked action movies as simply ragbag
assortments of fights, chases, and explosions. Die Hard, I think, changed ideas of just how well-
wrought an action picture could be. About 53 minutes of it consist of physical action (including
people sneaking around), leaving almost 70 minutes for other stuff: suspense, changing goals,
surprise information, attention to parallel plotlines, and little moments like the thief sneaking
candy just before an ambush.

The film typifies tidy classical Hollywood construction, beginning with an arrival (the jet) and
ending with a departure (the McClanes in a limo). In between we get a big dose of the classic
double plotline, romance and work. Holly’s job at Nakatomi threatens their marriage, and John
takes on a temp job, that of fighting the gang, which also endangers the couple’s efforts to
reconcile.

For every Superman, there’s a Kryptonite, and here the protagonist’s flaws include his fear of
heights (set up in the second shot, reiterated throughout) and, more importantly, his resistance
to Holly’s independence. By the end, he’s learned a lesson. The film’s streak of male
sentimentality allows John to ask his wife’s forgiveness for blocking her career ambition. She’s
ready to compromise too, reassuming his last name when she meets Al. The characters we care
about change, at least a little. That could be the motto of most classical Hollywood plots.

As usual, we get crosscutting among several lines of action. John’s arrival is crosscut with Holly
at work fending off Ellis, and in the rest of the film the gang’s stratagems are intercut with the
cops’ plans and McClane’s efforts. At various points, five or six actions are alternating with one
another.

All these escalating situations cluster into distinct parts, the four that Kristin has argued for as
typical of Hollywood architecture.

The Setup runs about 33 minutes, culminating in the murder of Takagi and Hans’s
promise that he can open the vault.
 The Complicating Action, a counter-setup, coalesces around John’s goals of
communicating with outsiders, avoiding capture, and attacking the thieves when he can.
Through many chases and fights, the gang seeks to block all these efforts. The lines
converge when John shoots Marco and tosses his body onto Al’s car. He gains the bag
with the detonators, giving him the upper hand. Then the TV reporter gets involved, the
cops arrive, and John is ordered to wait. Things seem to be stabilized.

After this midpoint, the Development supplies what Kristin calls “action, suspense, and
delay.” Officer Dwayne Robinson arrives, pitting himself against Al and McClane. We can
regard the police assault, Ellis’s clumsy attempt to broker a deal, and the arrival of the
FBI men as a series of delays that endanger the stability of the standoff. At the end of
this section, John meets Hans (posing as an escaped hostage): now both men know
each other. And in the firefight that follows, John loses the detonators. Hans declares,
“We’re back in business,” and the original plan can go forward.

The last twenty-five minutes constitute the Climax, launched by McClane’s “darkest
moment.” He seems utterly beaten. Picking glass shards out of his feet, he gives Al a
message for Holly over the CB radio. Al tells of his own burden, the accidental shooting
of a child. The stakes are now very high.

Rapid crosscutting shows John finding the bombs on the roof and fighting with Karl,
while the FBI helicopter attacks the building and Hans discovers that Holly is John’s wife.
John stampedes the hostages down the stairs off the roof and escapes the strafing from
the chopper before it blows. Argyle dispatches Theo, while John finds the surviving gang
members in the atrium and shoots Hans, who falls to his death.

In the Epilogue, Al and John meet, Al dispatches Karl, Holly socks the newsman, and
John and Holly drive off with Argyle.

These parts present a tight, logically building plot composed of swiftly changing situations. Along
the way we encounter a great many motifs that create echoes or contrasts. Everyone notices the
Rolex, at first a symbol of Holly’s talents but also of corporate swagger; only by unfastening it
can they let Hans drop from the window. When Argyle floats the possibility that Holly will rush
back into John’s arms for a movie ending, John murmurs: “I can live with that.” Agent Johnson
speaks the same line, but for him it means an acceptable level of civilian casualties.

Holly’s unmarried name, Gennero, shows how a motif can develop in relation to the drama. At
first it’s a sign of pride in her own identity (typical corporation, Nakatomi has misspelled it on the
touch screen). Her name-change triggers the couple’s quarrel, but it has another narrative use:
It conceals John’s identity from Hans. And at the end he introduces her to Al as Gennero but she
reasserts her love by correcting him: “Holly McClane.”

Then there are differences of class and country. Hans reads Forbes, but McClane the US boomer
references Roy Rogers and Jeopardy. (Hans is so unplugged from pop culture he thinks John
Wayne was in High Noon.) Argyle the former cab driver and Al the cop know the downside of city
life, but so does John the New York detective, who adapts Roy’s trademark phrase to the mean
streets: “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.”
Even a conventional Hollywood gesture, that of attacking a picture of a loved one, acquires a
nifty plot function. Annoyed at John, Holly slaps down the family portrait on her shelf. Good thing
too, because otherwise Hans would have seen it during the invasion. We’re reminded of that
picture when in a moment of quiet John looks at the same snapshot in his wallet. Only after
Hans has encountered John is he able to flip the portrait back up and realize that Holly is the
“someone you do care about.”

There are lots more felicities like these–so many that I’d consider Die Hard a “hyperclassical
film,” a movie that’s more classically constructed than it needs to be. It spills out all these links
and echoes in a fever of virtuosity. Hard to believe that the makers started shooting without a
finished script.

Intensified continuity, personalized

Die Hard is a good example of a stylistic approach I’ve called “intensified continuity.” It’s a
modification of the classical method of staging, shooting, and cutting scenes. Here director John
McTiernan and DP Jan de Bont tweak that approach in distinctive and powerful ways. You can
find examples all the way through the movie, but I’ll draw most of my illustrations from the first
hour, when the stylistic premises get laid out for us.

Cutting speeds accelerated sharply in Hollywood films from the 1960s onward, and for its time,
Die Hard was a rapidly-cut movie. The average shot runs just under five seconds, about what
you’d get in a 1920s silent film. By today’s standards, which fall more in the 3-4 second range
(even for movies outside the action genre), it’s a bit sedate.

One factor that increases the cutting pace is a greater reliance on singles and close-ups. These
are tighter than we’d expect in most studio films of the classic era.
 [6]

[7]

Even in close-up, the shots aren’t snipped free of their surroundings, thanks to the wide frame
and layers of focus–both important in the film’s overall style, as we’ll see.

Likewise, intensified continuity exploits a greater range of lens lengths than we’d find in studio
films of the classic era. We get wide-angle shots like those above along with telephoto shots
throughout. Here the long lens is used to pile up people around Holly, and an even longer lens
shows her optical viewpoint on the bandits in the office.
 [8]

[9]

And there’s a free-roaming camera, thanks chiefly to Steadicam technology. But interestingly,
Die Hard avoids some of today’s most common camera movements, such as shooting a fixed
conversation with a sidewise or circular tracking shot. These would become more common in the
1990s.

McTiernan thought a lot about his camera movements, as he explains in interviews and the
commentary track on the DVD. He wanted to shape spectators’ attention, to use camera
movement to nudge things into view. “The audience’s eye wants to go with you.” Accordingly,
more than in many contemporary films, many camera movements have a shape: they end on a
point of information.

Sometimes it’s just a quick pan, doing duty for a cut. At other times, the reframing is a gentle
nudge that prepares for a new scenic element, as when Holly enters her office.
 [10]

[11]

In shooting Predator (1987), McTiernan wanted to cut moving shots together, but his editor
resisted. For Die Hard, he refilmed his camera movements at different rates so that two would
match. A good example is when Karl’s brother strides carefully into an area under construction.
The camera tracks with him, but when he turns to find the source of a whining noise, the arcing
movement at the end of one shot is picked up in the next as the framing circles to reveal the
saw.

[12]

[13] [12]
 [14]

That reveal is given, characteristically, in rack focus. I could have added rack focus as another
featured technique of intensified continuity. McTiernan and de Bont take it very far, making Die
Hard one of the great rack-focus movies. The image is constantly shifting focus to guide our
attention to the changing layers of the scene.

[15]

[16]

[17]
This neat, compact presentation not only preserves the commitment to long-lens close-ups we
find in intensified continuity. The technique also gives each rack focus the snapping force of a
cut. (And you don’t need to build big sets.) Needless to say, the rack-focusing wouldn’t work if
McTiernan hadn’t committed himself to staging his action in depth. More on this below.

Staging in ‘Scope

Die Hard finds ingenious ways to “let the audience’s eye go with you” in the widescreen format.
Sometimes it’s a matter of classic edge framing. Thanks to a low angle, John and Holly converse
along a wide-angle diagonal.

[18]

Sometimes McTiernan reverts to a technique not enough directors use nowadays: blocking and
revealing. In classic cinema that was usually a technique reserved for long shots, when actors
could move aside as part of ensemble. Die Hard applies blocking and revealing to the tight
framings of intensified continuity.

A thug in an elevator checks his weapon, pivots for an instant, and then moves aside to show
the elevator arriving at the target floor.
 [19]

[20]

[21]

Here again a rack focus helps. The moment reiterates the importance of the thirtieth floor in the
skyscraper’s geography.

When Hans finds the body of Karl’s brother, we can study his expression. He flips the victim’s
head to reveal a gunman, who looks to Hans before he says his line.
 [22]

[23]

[24]

In a neat touch, the thug’s mouth isn’t shown. Today a director would probably show his whole
face, but, really, who cares? The careful framing keeps him a secondary character, and a future
target of McClane. And no need to rack focus on him, which would give him unwonted
importance. All we need to remember him is that he’s the thug with long hair.

I can’t refrain from using one audacious example from late in the film. John and Hans have met,
and Hans has revealed himself by targeting John with the pistol McClane has given him. In
reverse shot, John reveals that it has no bullets and grabs it away from Hans.
 [25]

[26]

But the pistol, and that gesture, have concealed the elevator behind them. When the pistol is
knocked down, the elevator light pops on in the background. Our attention snaps to it, aided by
that characteristic ping we hear throughout the movie (another motif).

[27]

[28]

The crisp turn of events, given visually and sonically, gets ampified by the acting. McClane’s
cockiness turns to panic and Hans gets the upper hand. (“Think I’m fucking stupid, Hans?” Ping.
“You vere saying?”)

The most bravura rack-focus comes during the climax, when the firehouse reel whizzes down
behind McClane and he realizes that he’s being dragged through the shattered window.

[29]

[30]

[31]

The coordination of the long lens, camera movement, staging, and racking focus is especially
rich when Hans drifts among the hostages searching for the man in charge. He recites Takagi’s
life history as he passes from one possibility to another (including, comically, Ellis).
 [32]

[33]

[34]

At the climax of the passage, McTiernan’s staging-in-layers sets up Takagi, Karl, and Holly before
Takagi takes charge. Briefly blocked by Hans, he admits his identity by stepping out from behind
and into focus.
 [35]

[36]

[37]

McTiernan isn’t done. A reverse shot of Hans finishing his spiel (“…and father of five”) punctuates
the suspense. McTiernan buttons up this passage by returning to his “moving master” shot and
having Karl shove Takagi out.
 [38]

[39]

[40]

That clears the way for us to see Holly’s reaction. A beat dwells on her as she shifts her eyes to
Hans, foreshadowing her conflict with him at the climax.
 [41]

[42]

This sort of layering of faces popping in and out of visibility has precedents in earlier cinema,
chiefly of the “tableau” period of the 1910s. McTiernan has, I think, spontaneously rediscovered
for modern times what William C. de Mille was up to in the party scene in The Heir to the Hoorah
(1916). (For more on that, go here [43].)
 [44]

[45]

Of course McTiernan also has to work with the 2.35:1 anamorphic format, which enables him to
spread his layers out more. That format also allows some remarkable compositions, such as the
one surmounting today’s entry. The cut to the shot of John in Holly’s office uses the abstract
splash painting (seen here for the first time) as a visual analogy for the explosion of gunfire
offscreen at the same time.

McTiernan and de Bont constantly find striking but cogent images, thanks to lighting as well as
color and format. Here’s McClane on top of an elevator peering through the perforated grille; his
POV is a striking but still informative composition. the cut between the two provides a little
punch of contrasting light and shade.
 [46]

[47]

There are felicities like these feathered all through this remarkable movie, but the momentum of
storytelling never flags. This remains a masterpiece of Hollywood filmmaking.

Thanks to our readers for following us this year. Kristin will be weighing in soon with her annual
list of best films from ninety years ago. In the meantime, HO-HO-HO.

Madison owes an enormous debt to our Cinematheque team: programmers Jim Healy, Mike King,
Ben Reiser, and Zach Zahos, as well as veteran projectionist Roch Gersbach. Santa should
reward them. You can too by visiting the Cinematheque’s Podcast, Cinematalk [48]. There you’ll
find conversations with Manohla Dargis, Schawn Belston, and James Runde.

For lots of background on the making of this film and the four sequels, there’s Die Hard: The
Ultimate Visual History [49] by Ronald Mottram and David S. Cohen. At rogerebert.com, Matt
Zoller Seitz has a discerning appreciation [50]on the occasion of the film’s twenty-fifth
anniversary.

Jake Tapper has provided the definitive analysis [51] of Die Hard as a bona fide Christmas movie.

McTiernan (with whom I share an alma mater) provides very good DVD commentaries (even for
Basic). Prison [52] also seems to have given him some pronounced political views [53]. Alas, the
website he created as a platform for them is apparently no longer available. Word is that
[54] McTiernan is preparing a new film, Tau Ceti 4, with Uma Thurman. A videogame promo
[55] is purportedly signed by him.
Of other McTiernan films, I also much admire The Hunt for Red October (1990). The Thomas
Crown Affair (1999) seems to me better directed than the original, and The 13th Warrior (1999),
despite being taken out of his hands, remains a pretty interesting film. (Name another Hollywood
movie in which a Muslim poet visiting Northern Europe is justly appalled at its barbarism.)
Nomads (1986) also has its good points.

I discuss the issues of narrative and style raised here at greater length in The Way Hollywood
Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies. You can also search “intensified continuity” for blog
entries hereabouts. On CinemaScope aesthetics, see this entry [56] and this video [57].

[58]

Die Hard (1988).

Article printed from Observations on film art: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog

URL to article: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2019/12/17/not-just-a-christmas-

movie-die-hard-on-the-big-screen/

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[2] a fall season: http://film wisconsin cinematheque
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[43] here: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2017/05/17/wayward-ways-and-
roads-not-taken/
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[48] Cinematalk: https://cinema.wisc.edu/podcasts
[49] Die Hard: The Ultimate Visual History: https://smile.amazon.com/Die-Hard-Ultimate-
Visual-History/dp/1608879739/ref=sr_1_1?
crid=2IR1FB2CKAJ0J&keywords=die+hard+the+ultimate+visual+history&qid=15766
20138&s=books&sprefix=die+hard%2Cstripbooks%2C179&sr=1-1
[50] a discerning appreciation : https://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/die-hard-in-a-
building-an-action-classic-turns-25
[51] the definitive analysis:
https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/945475662827151360?lang=en
[52] Prison: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/die-hard-director-john-
mctiernan-683407
[53] some pronounced political views: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/die-
hard-director-john-mctiernan-731171
[54] Word is that: https://www.screendaily.com/news/uma-thurman-john-mctiernan-
team-up-on-cannes-sales-title-tau-ceti-4-exclusive/5139104.article
[55] A videogame promo: https://entertainment.ie/gaming/die-hard-director-john-
mctiernans-first-work-in-14-years-is-a-games-advertisement-277368/
[56] this entry: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2013/04/24/scoping-things-out-
a-new-video-lecture/
[57] this video: https://vimeo.com/64644113
[58] Image: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/John-hose-
700.jpg

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