YIPPEE-KI-YAY AND HAPPY 30TH TO 'DIE HARD'.........

Die Hard (1988)    It's hard to underestimate the influence this movie had.........on Hollywood and movie-going in general......

              It inaugurated a whole new era of action movies........all the usual running, shooting and punching now gaudily spruced up with the new array of state-of-the-art special effects......(in this movie, such effects still used model and miniatures......and actual real explosions)

              As the years went by, these effects eclipsed the physical action........actors performed all their heroics in front of green screens while CGI companies could throw out the laws of physics and gravity.......(to its everlasting credit, 'Die Hard' still stuck to such rules)

               The primal set-up of 'Die Hard' became irresistible to the studios.......one lone hero,trapped in an enclosed environment , facing impossible odds as he battles an  army of  thugs......(with the evil gang led by an especially vicious, murderous mastermind)           

               If video stores were still around, you could fully stock them with nothing but 'Die Hard' imitations that flooded the market after this film took the summer of '88 by storm........

                You could even divide up your 'Die Hard' Video Store into categories........big budget imitations ("Cliffhanger", "Air Force One", "Under Siege", etc, etc)........direct-to-video imitations (far too many to mention, or even remember.....)

                 Or you could choose your categories strictly by setting.......(Die Hard on a boat, Die Hard on a plane, Die Hard on a train, Die Hard on a mountain,  Die Hard in a Port-a-Potty.....(okay, we made that last one up, but sooner or later someone will film it, we're sure......)

                 We'll post on some of those films soon, but let's face it......'Die Hard' stands forever as the best and brightest of the bunch........a perfect storm of humor, suspense, spectacle and full-throttle action.

                  Was there ever a creepier, nastier villain than Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber?   We don't think so.......(we could still re-experience the overwhelming dread during that brief scene when Rickman encounters Willis)

                   We didn't even mind that so many of the peripheral characters are such cartoonish idiots......Hart Bochner's coke-addled executive, Paul Gleason's sputtering Police Chief. (he looks like he came directly from holding the Breakfast Club under detention)......William Atherton's slimy newsman, begging for a well-deserved punch......and Robert Davi and Grand Bush's callous FBI agents, well on their way to their own well-deserved fate......

                  Perfect viewing for a hot summer night in 1988........and 30 years later.......we still fell hard for 'Die Hard'......4 stars (****)..........we can't say 'accept no substitutes', since some of them are as much fun as this one.......but nothing quite equals the thrill of starting off with the original....