#1 — Die Hard
This is the FINAL part of an illustrated countdown of my 49 1/2 most essential action movies. I never could have imagined the completion of this stupid undertaking would align with a pandemic, keeping us isolated and attached to monitors and phones. My desert island action movies turned into exactly that. I hope this was a decent distraction. If not, I will have to answer to the High Table, the Shaolin temple, and my dear friend Colonel Trautman. Last week I talked about my favorite monster and my favorite action star just hanging out and having a good time in the jungle, just being boys and whatnot.
What do you want me to say here? You’ve all seen this one, right? You’ve all read a million takes about it. Its existence on any action list has become an obligatory stamp of approval, and many of you will watch it on December 25, for some reason that escapes me. I would say all of that is evidence why it’s good and essential. It’s not even my favorite action movie (not sure I have one?), but anyone can watch Die Hard and enjoy it. It birthed many little baby Die Hards, creating the Die Hard template — which has been used by other action movies on this countdown. Die Hard in a building gave us Die Hard on trains, planes, boats, and passenger buses. All roads lead to Die Hard, a massive, tangled family tree of action.
I know it might sound insane for anyone reading this kind of over-indulgent countdown to process the idea of not seeing Die Hard or being unfamiliar with action movies, but they’re out there. There are new generations of movie fans still getting their feet wet because they “heard Lord of the Rings is good and want to check it out”. There are now entire YouTube channels dedicated to people watching the IMDB Top 100 for the first time. That probably means we’re getting old. But others are getting old enough, becoming more aware, interested, and eager to experience new things. Maybe this countdown thing was for them all along.
Die Hard is a perfect action movie, but it’s also perfect to show people that haven’t seen many. It checks off so many boxes. It’s a perfectly prepared meal where no line of dialogue, scene, or spectacle is wasted. It’s suspenseful, exciting, funny, perfectly paced, wonderfully acted, and even a little heartwarming. It has a classic villain, a star-making performance by a somewhat new kind of action hero, and a terrific henchman — who even has a little brother, giving us an extra henchman. Is that a henchling?
Maybe Bruce Willis wasn’t an entirely brand new action archetype, he’s very much of the Indiana Jones mold. What I do know is that he represented a paradigm shift from muscular Greek gods who were destined for the job of punching evil in the face to almost ordinary looking guys who fell into the job’s lap and proved themselves capable when time and circumstance called their number. You could imagine McClane lucking his way into surviving an encounter with an alien hunter from space, or just driving a cab through New York City (which he does in part 3, though not in an officially licensed capacity).
As a tv actor, this was his breakout role. He’s done some great and varied work in the years since, but I think this remains his most important. I’m not here to label “best”, but I don’t think he’s done anything else that is better than his work in the first Die Hard. It’s a very physical, sometimes comedic, sometimes dramatic role that requires believability as a capable hero and a down-on-his-luck underdog at the same time. He does it effortlessly, as if he’d been playing this part for years.
One thing I really like about this particular character is that he’s aware of action heroes, and so are his enemies. His opponent smugly refers to him as John Wayne, an American cowboy for the big screen. McClane corrects him, citing his preference for Roy Rogers, the multitalented singing cowboy. Not only does this suit him as an expert shit-talker who can wield words as skillfully as weapons, but it points to his trajectory on the action hero timeline. Aware of his past while pointing towards the future, as a new decade of action films and actors was about to take hold.
John McTiernan directing Predator and Die Hard in back-to-back years is an achievement worthy of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and it represents a major touchstone for the genre. In one stroke, he celebrated and deconstructed the army-of-one action commando archetype. And then this, a State Of The Union for action cinema — nodding to the past while pointing towards the future, laying a new foundation over the rubble of Predator’s nuclear blast.
So that’s it folks, that’s all 49 1/2 of my most essential action movies, illustrated, documented, and already outdated. But I think it’s a good starting point. There are blanks you’ll have to fill in yourself. I would have liked to cover Project A or Supercop. I didn’t track down Yes, Madam! until I was well underway. I regret leaving out In The Line of Duty IV. Nobody told me Resident Evil: Retribution was a misunderstood masterpiece (no, seriously). I could never find a way to see elusive Hong Kong titles like A Hero Never Dies or Tiger Cage, and I only just learned of Action U.S.A, another unearthed fossil of cartoonish action exploits. There are even more picks absent that just don’t resonate with me the way I wish they did. I’ll leave the rest to you. I did not intend to write this much, it was only for the drawings. Guess I got carried away. Thanks for reading.
