From what I've heard Christmas is meant
to be a time for families to all get together whilst giving each
other thoughtful gifts. Last Shitmas I told my Dad what DVDs I was
excited about and hinted heavily that they might make some good
presents. You can imagine my excitement when I opened my main gift
off him and it turned out to be a £2 fucking dinner tray. Later that
night I found myself sat alone in my room, eating a cold turkey pizza
whilst wishing that there was something better on television than
Jingle All The Way. In a list
of things funnier and more endearing than that film I would
definitely have to include cock spots and cancer of the gooch. To
make matters worse I was also eating my food straight off my knees
like a proper fucking pauper. As it turns out, after mere hours of
languishing in shear giddiness of my new gift, it had already been
stolen from me. By 'pure coincidence', Dad had recently broken his
own dinner tray and failed to notify me of the need to reserve my own
sodding present. I know it's the thought that counts but the only
thing that I could think at the time was, “what a tight fucking
bastard'.
I know
that shitmas is for children and religious crazies but it's still
such a pain in the arse. There's only one thing that gets me
temporarily into the festive spirit and that's watching my favourite
Christmas movie. Every year without fail I genuinely spend the 24th
of December watching Die Hard and
that's about as close as I get to enjoying the season. If watching
Bruce Willis shoot a bunch of terrorists in the head doesn't make me
feel Christmassy then absolutely nothing will.
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| "Young, dumb and full of his cum" |
As
action films go I'm sure we all agree that Die Hard is
clearly the best. In fact I think there should be a mandatory prison
sentences for anybody who thinks differently. It belongs in that
small group of gung-ho movies that came out between about 1985 and
1995 that completely defined the genre. I suppose other examples
could of course be things like Leon, Hard Boiled and
everyone's favourite Brokeback/beat-em-up Point Break.This
was almost the golden period of action movies in which they were both
intelligent and aimed at adults. Before then they were all about
Stallone-esque, beefcaked retards whose brains were about as big as
their steroid-shrunk cocks. Obviously Arnie is excluded from that
simply for being so in love with himself that it becomes genuinely
infectious. You've got to admire a man who can say shit like, “Don't
disturb my friend, he's dead tired”, and still in reality become an
elected politician.
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| "Of course I need the power drill. There might be boys there." |
So,
released in 1988, Die Hard begins
with Detective John McClane visiting his estranged wife Holly at her
Christmas work party. They've been living apart for a while and
despite Holly having a hair cut like a psychopaths uncontrolled
pubes, he intends to try and reconcile their marriage. When reaching
the merry shindig however, McClane finds his 're-fuck the wife' goal
thwarted by Hans Gruber and his gang of obviously gay German porn
stars. Posing as terrorists, Gruber and his men hold the whole
building hostage in an attempt to rob its vaults of $640 million
worth of untraceable bearer bonds. Presumably they intend to use the
money to fund their various addictions to peroxide, steroids and
poppers. I'm not generalising that to all gay people by the way, it's
just that if this lot weren't violent terrorists then they'd
definitely be just as happy working and playing hard in a funked up,
disco steel-mill. Also I can't be sure but I'm pretty certain one of
the terrorists is actually played by Jeffery Dahmer. I don't know how
much necrophilia and cannibalism Gruber has planned for this robbery
but I guess it can't hurt to be prepared.
Meanwhile in
another part of the building, McClane is scampering about upstairs
like the barefoot bandit. Having heard the gunshots outside his room,
his policing instincts kicked in causing him to leave the hostages in
danger as he ran away to hide. Unfortunately for him this happened
during a moment of relaxation in which he had removed his socks and
shoes to make weird feet fists on the carpet. Although this is a
problem for him, it could be worse. Considering how Richard Gere
relaxes he'd have spent the entire movie fighting terrorists with a
little mouse tale poking out of his arsehole.
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| "Dammit Janet, just smile for Christ's sakes" |
So with McClane
hiding upstairs and wanting to show off to his bushy haired wife he
decides to save the building. This means creeping about like a pesky
member of the Vietcong and attacking whenever he finds a half-good
moment or sees a flash of blonde. At the same time he's also got a
direct radio to Gruber allowing the two men to flirt outrageously in
a bid to work out what the other is after. Considering McClane wants
Holly back and Gruber wants his men to stop being killed the movie is
basically an explosive, redneck adaptation of that grotty, swinging
TV show Wife Swap. I don't want to sound like a dick but in
all honesty, if I was McClane I wouldn't go to the effort. Holly is
played brilliantly by Bonnie Bedelia and she's a likeable enough
character but not worth taking a bullet for. If you don't know what
she looks like then just picture Susan Sarandon after she's
surgically removed her sense of fun. In a way I like to think of Die
Hard as an unofficial sequel to Thelma and Louise in which
Bedelia plays a post-crash Sarandon whose had all the smiles smashed
out of her.
In a way, and in
her defence, I suppose you could argue that her character doesn't
really have that much to be happy about. She's married to a man whose
quickly going bald, she's being held hostage and she's living in the
80's. If I'd lived through ten years of shoulder pads, neon socks and
Flashdance legwarmers then finding myself staring down the
barrel of a gun would probably hugely cheer me up. Particularly if
the man holding that gun was Alan Rickman giving the best performance
of his movie career. I know that he was one of the best things about
Harry Potter but even seeing him cast a spell isn't as magic
as hearing the patronising way he pronounces, “Yippi Ki yay mutha
falka”. If anything it's possibly that it's Rickman's villain that
helps make this film stand above all those other action classics from
that brief golden period. I don't remember the bad guy in Hardboiled
but there's always been something a bit off putting about Patrick
Swayze in Point Break. In fact there's something a bit off
putting about Patrick Swayze in everything except when perfectly cast
in Donnie Darko. I'm not suggesting that in real life he was a
paedophile but that he simply had a pervy looking smile and creepy,
beady eyes that made him very believable as one.
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| Merry Christmas, boys and girls! |
So Die Hard has
a great villain, meaning it's going to need a pretty good hero to
match. Luckily then, Willis also showed up and delivered a career
defining performance too. What's interesting when watching the film
is just how normal McClane is. With its unsubtle title and brutal
action reputation you'd expect the hero to be Bruce Willis at his
burly best. However instead he's just your regular, average man.
Admittedly he does kill a few terrorists without worrying so I guess
he's actually your average American man. Although he gets
quite neck-snappy at times he also has a little cry in the bathroom
too. The closest I think Arnie ever got to crying was when he
realised he couldn't fuck the alien's vagina-mouth in Predator.
However just because McClane is more human than those other
pumped-up, muscle-tards doesn't make him any less funny. Every word
spoken in the Running Man is wet your pants hilarious but Die
Hard actually makes you laugh intentionally. McClane is a
desperate man and when faced with an impossible situation the best
thing to do is really to just take piss. So it's good that when not
killing the terrorists he spends his time winding them the fuck up.
My favourite bit is obviously when he sticks one of his murder
victims in a lift and writes on his jumper, “Now I have a machine
gun. Ho, ho, ho”. It's actually about this point that I really
start getting as close as possible to that Christmas feeling!
Obviously too it
goes without saying that the action is clearly brilliant. In fact I
would say that this one film has everything in it that you could
possibly ask for from helicopter explosions to hanging Germans. The
film was masterfully directed by John McTiernan who has since gone on
to do absolutely fuck all. In 2008 he was sent to prison for his
involvement with the dodgy private investigator Anthony Pellicano
however I honestly think his more serious crime was the shitty 2002
remake of Rollerball. In his defence, I suppose he did direct
Die Hard: With A Vengeance which although not as good as the
original is still the best of the sequels. It seems to me that where
the Die Hard Franchise is concerned, nobody making them seems
to understand what made it so great in the first place. Each film has
gotten bigger and bigger which is completely the wrong thing to do.
The first was set in one building, then an airport, then New York,
then most of America and apparently in the next instalment he's
heading to Russia too. I can only assume as each setting gets larger
that Die Hard 6 will be set on the fucking moon as McClane
hides in a crater from the pissing clangers.
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| "Fritzl? Yippee Ki Yay, family fucker!" |
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| Merry fucking Christmas |
Since
its release back in 1988 Die Hard has
almost become the joke answer when people are asked about their
favourite christmas film. But for me when I say it, I'm being
completely genuine. It's set during that crappy time, features a
festive song by Dean Martin and ends with a feel-good moment in which
money flutters down from the sky like it would if Donald Trump
started sponsoring snow. I've already been told that this Christmas
my Mum wants me to have left her house by 5:00pm because she, “wants
to enjoy the day too”. Beyond being deeply offended by the burden
that my company must be to the woman who selfishly spat me into this
world, I will at least have plenty of time for more movies. Other
alternative Christmas films that I recommend to those who hate the
season as much as me are In Bruges, Brazil, OHMSS and
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. My rule in
selecting them are that they have to feature a Christmas tree and a
lot of people have to die. McClane
might have lamented his day being chased about by Terrorists but at
least people were thinking about him. Die Hard is
not only the greatest action film of all time but for me it really is
the highlight of one miserable fucking day.
Follow this blog or I'll fucking cut you.
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