We’re back in firm action blast territory next with perhaps the granddaddy of all Christmas action movies. The debate has raged for decades - is 1988’s Die Hard a ‘proper’ Christmas film? Of course it is. If there was some sort of Xmas-o-meter by which to grade such things, John McClane (Bruce Willis)’s maiden big screen outing may score a little lower than some of the films on this list but it’s still more than festive enough to qualify.
John McTiernan’s film has spawned a thousand imitators with few coming anywhere close to matching its intensity, thrills or laughs. Die Hard isn’t just an excellent action film but a great film, period, with plenty of its thrills firmly rooted in its holiday setting. John’s in L.A. to see his kids for Christmas and it all goes down during his wife Holly’s office party that’s established as the main reason for Alan Rickman’s Euro-villain Hans Gruber even attempting to pull off his hi-tech robbery scheme. His gang needs the building mostly empty and security relaxed for the plan to work - when else are you gonna have a boozy party at work?
The soundtrack is festive as hell with Run DMC’s ‘Xmas in Hollis’ keeping things grimy, while classics like ‘Winter Wonderland’, ‘Let it Snow’ and ‘Ode to Joy’ lend a classic yuletide feel to proceedings.
Presents play an important part too, with asshole yuppie Ellis (Hart Bochner) boasting about how the Nakatomi Company gave everyone a fancy Rolex as a gift. It’s Holly’s Rolex that saves her life, with Hans hanging onto the watch as they dangle from the roof before John snaps it off. The film makes a big point here about material goods being meaningless compared to the love of family. Am I right?
Oh yeah, McClane also uses festive-themed sticky tape to hide a gun on his back - would that just have been lying around any other time of year? And how can we forget the whole dressing up of a henchman’s corpse in a Santa hat with the scrawled “Ho ho Ho” machine gun threat scrawled on his shirt?
It also snows at the end - what are the odds? A Christmas miracle. The whole picture is understatedly Christmassy throughout, from the moment a stewardess wishes John a “Merry Christmas”, the film never lets us forget what time of year it is. So yeah, Die Hard is a Christmas movie if you want it to be. But is it more of a Christmas movie than Lethal Weapon? Hmmmmmm…..
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