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It's Christmas movie time and we've done a few: Elf, Muppet Christmas Carol (you can watch the full version on Disney know if you select the deleted scene in the extras - finally it makes sense) and the Grinch. The other day my wife asked if we were going to watch Die Hard, which I am sorry, idiots, IS a Christmas Movie, but unusually for me I felt we'd watched it recently enough and didn't want to. Ditto Die Hard 2. But for some reason I felt in the mood for the ultimate Christmas Movie Die Hard With a Vengeance. Now it may be settled that Die Hard is a Christmas film- it just is - but does that make any Die Hard film, even one set in the summer time, a Christmas film? YES, a thousand times YES.
It just is.
So we've been watching Die Hard III in snatches over the last few days and I have to say that it's not very good. Let's face it, nothing matches up to Die Hard, but you'd expect the Die Hard sequels to come closer than they do. What makes Die Hard better than other films like this is the level of wit in it and this is largely absent from the sequels and the laziness of the writers of 3 is shown by them choosing very hack puzzles for Willis and L Jackson to solve, including the fucking "As I was going to St Ives one" which doesn't even work, because a) it asks you how many were going to St Ives but seemingly wants you to count sacks and cats in that number and b) the answer is one because the teller is going to St Ives and if he met all these other people with cats and sacks they must be going in the other direction. That is in no way true. The solo traveller without cats and sacks could easily just be walking faster than the others and meet them on the way, or they might have stopped for their lunch.
The point is though, it's a hoary old riddle which any grown up should have heard before, as is the one about 3 and 5 gallon containers. Go further than the Penguin Book of Brain Teasers, Jeremy Irons. You're no Alan Rickman and you never will be.
In Die Hard, Willis is just about believable as a one-man army outsmarting the terrorists with wit and a bit of luck. By 3, he is a video game character or superhero who can survive explosions and falls that would definitely leave him permanently disabled at least and manages to act like Supermario on magic mushrooms and sort of leap his way out of a huge torrent of water.
And something I hadn't noticed before. When on the ship, he gives L Jackson a machine gun and shows him how to use it, but doesn't mention that he needs to take the safety off, leading to an unconcerned Irons shooting L Jackson in the leg. Why didn't Willis mention that? Was he racist after all?
I also am not the enamoured by the subplot that pitches L Jackson as the one who is looking everywhere for racism and it's actually him who is racist against white people.
It seems like drunk on birthday spirit and maybe also alcohol I thought this was good fun back then, but it doesn't feel like a Die Hard film at all. I haven't googled it, but I bet I am correct iin saying that this is a script that wasn't written as a Die Hard film and then they decided to make it one after all. It's even lower on wit than 3 - often Willis doesn't even attempt to say a funny line after a happening and possibly the funniest bit is Timothy Oliphant daring him to make a funny comment when Willis finds out they have his daughter hostage. And Willis doesn't even try. Die Hard One Willis would have been cooler and come up with something.
As I noticed in 2007 it's very much in the style of 24, but diehard Die Hard fans don't want 24. They want Die Hard. The writers try to paper over the cracks. Die Hard One Willis was scared of flying, but Die Hard 4 Willis can just about fly helicopters and has to tell his passenger that he once didn't like flying but has got over it. Don't draw attention to it.
And if you're going to try and make sense of it, perhaps put in something about Willis having realised he is a God or in a videogame which explains why he can fall out of planes unharmed and shoot himself directly through the shoulder and not blow his entire shoulder off.
Anyway we got through 4.0 and Catie said "There isn't a 5 is there?" I didn't want to tell her that there was. I am not sure if I've ever seen "A Good Day to Die Hard" and I consider myself a Die Hard fan. I wouldn't say I am a diehard fan though. Just a regular fan. If I did see Die Hard 5 I have wiped it from my memory (but that happens with nearly everything I watch nowadays). I don't want to watch it. But I didn't want to rewatch 4 either. So maybe we have to complete it. It is, after all Christmas. And there is nothing more Christmassy than watching the three worst Die Hard films, at least two of which are set in the summer.
RHLSTP with the divine and unique and perfectly herself Fern Brady is now up.
Don't miss it!
