Die Hard Five Trailer And The Rest Of The Franchise

I enjoyed this trailer for the latest Die Hard feature. Number five in the series and cool to see that Willis can still play the character that made him famous. The twist on this one is that he is joined by his son and I can see from that trailer that there will be some really cool father/son bonding moments. That situation will be mined to great comedy effect I suspect.

I am also curious to see how they will rack up more property damage than ever before. You rarely see a civilian get killed but you see many a car or subway or airplane or other high ticket item get smashed into bridges, abandoned buildings or a busy downtown. Those cities would never be able to get damage insurance again

One of the singularly best times I ever had at the theatre was watching the first Die Hard movie. It was unlike any adventure we had seen before even though the premise was a well worn movie formula (lone good guy tries to save ex-wife who is being held by terrorists in a corporate office tower)  What made Die Hard stand out was the humour and humanity of the hero played by Bruce Willis and a few nice plot and script twists that jar you from your seat, the seat whose edges you have not let go of since the action started.

One of the reasons the movie works is that it draws you into the crisis so completely that you can't help but watch to see how things will work out. I may miss the first half hour but I will still watch this film every time I come across it on the satellite. Knowing how it ends never ruins all the other great parts. I watch and strangely enough I feel the same emotions the first time to the 20th time I have seen Die Hard.



Of course that movie had such a great villain. It was Alan Rickman's turn as Hans Gruber, the best dressed terrorist thief you will ever meet, that started a whole genre of copycats. Gruber would not have been as cool by comparison if we didn't all find a gem in Bruce Willis. At this point in his career he was a joke. Moonlighting had just tanked with a huge fan backlash and it looked like he was back singing with his less than talented bar band. He was the lead singer of that Hewey Lewis wannabee revival that lasted all of ten minutes when the movie rocked the Christmas movie season.



The second in the series is for me, the most exciting, because it has McClain against not only terrorists but terrorists from within the American military. The stunt scenes are wonderfully huge and out of control as are the enemy characters who never seem to go away. I always wondered how they could find another situation where McClain can just HAPPEN to be at when the bad guys strike and a crowded airport at Christmas was genius.

I loved the high tech ways that Willis defeats the terrorists with decidedly low tech solutions. No finesse but we aren't looking for finesse with any film in this franchise.

Fred Thompson is also great in this one as the calm in the middle of the crisis. He feeds McClain information while trying to keep the planes from crashing because they had ran out of fuel. I always feel his voice commands the right kind of authority to keep the rest of the people in the room of air traffic controllers from crapping their pants.



Die Hard With A Vengeance always leaves my mind just after I see it. For some reason I remember The Long Goodbye, the great Gina Davis movie, when I think of this film. It's Samuel Jackson being Samuel L. Jackson. Tolerable but that crazy game of 'Simon Sez' drains me. It's too frenetic and cartoonish to ever be taken seriously and you need just a tiny bit of reality to make a Die Hard movie work.



It's funny to watch part 4 and not laugh at the villain since he is Timothy Olyphant, who I can now and forever only see as Raylen Givens from Justified. This one zipped along and had some great stunts and last minute saves. Smarter than it has any right to be but solid none-the-less.