Die Hard (1988)

Today's film is Die Hard, which is an excellent Christmas film.  There are some who would argue that this is not a Christmas film, and they are wrong.

John McClane is a New York City cop.  His wife left town and moved to LA to work at Nakatomi plaza.  This causes a rift between them because its hard being across the country and maybe his wife didn't consider his feelings on the matter.  What's worse is when he visits her office, he discovers that she is now using her maiden name.  What is up with that?

So, the office Christmas party gets overtaken by a German terrorist group.  But we learn that the whole terrorism thing is just a distraction so they can steal a ton of money from the vault.  In fact, they are counting on the feds cutting the power so they can open the vault more easily. Actually, that wouldn't work in real life.  Something as important as a vault would be on its own power supply and would still function even if the entire grid was shut off.

I think this movie would be a lot different if it were made today.  The book it was based on was written in the 1960s and the film came out in 1988.  But, today we have terrorist attacks all over the place.  My workplace put in several new policies right after the most recent attack in California.  Also, news reports love to focus on terror attacks and we have instant access to everything.  John McClane could have live-tweeted his whole experience. #Nakatomi #terroristsarebad

McClane does use what little technology he has to contact the police.  Other than that, he just uses his smarts and badassdom to defeat the majority of the terrorists singlehandedly.  There are no twists and turns, no strange plot devices, the whole film is straight up action.  The whole film.  Fun fact: The Nakatomi building is actually the 20th century Fox building.  This is a very exciting Christmas film.  I will give it an 8/10.