One of the best action movies of always, especially for me when it came out as a 13 year old at the time. The first of many sequels, this original one set in the iconic skyscraper building.
Let’s start with one of John Maclane’s (Bruce Willis with lots of hair) first lines of the movie “Trust me I’m a cop” , those were the good old days !!!! He then gets off his flight and lights up a smoke in the airport. It wasn’t that strange back then as untill 1988 you could actually smoke on planes, there was an ashtray on the arm of the seat for convience. How the world has changed…
Maclane then takes a front seat in the limousine sent to collect him, this tells you a lot about John Maclane in choosing that seating arrangement. He is a simple guy who takes no shit and needs no pampering. The Radio then plays a Hip hop Christmas song which reminds me of fresh prince of Belair so we are firmly in the 80’s.
Next piece of awesome technology that we are introduced to is touch screen technology, yes it hasn’t been around forever, this was my first introduction to it.
Now that we know that he’s the good guy we automatically love him, he’s just super cool and once we are introduced to the bad guys, we hate them equally as much as they are proper bad guys.
In those days we knew what the terrorists wanted and we understood them clearly. Now days we don’t as they are all a lot more complicated with all this philosophical crap of modern terrorists, I miss those old simple bad guys.
We are then introduced to the different stories of each character and we quickly understand they just normal people in extra ordinary situations. We can actually easily identify and connect with each of them.
Life lesson: Tough times are when we perform at our best and when our true colours shine through, its when we forced out of our comfort zones when the best things happen. Sometimes our true feelings also only come out during the tough times. When John mentions “That his wife is the best thing that happened to a bum like him” . How many of us bums don’t realize that until it’s too late. Let’s learn to say what we mean more often as it can only help us build better relationships with those we love.
Another classic line is when the helicopter with the asshole FBI agents goes down “I guess we going to need some more FBI guys” I love the way the movie mixes life and death with characters and comedy. Our current action movies nowadays take reality to the extreme as the comedy aspect is unfortunately simply absent much like today’s real life. It’s important to have a sense of humor and use it often, it makes life much happier.
Watch this movie anytime but it’s really best to re-watch close to Christmas when you need a feel good family classic movie.
Yip Ki-Yay mother f.ckers… Till the next review.