Once Die Hard (John McTiernan) made its official release into theaters across America in the summer of 1988, the film quickly became one of the biggest box office successes of the year. The 28-million-dollar budget film made $601,851 in its opening weekend limited-release across only 21 theaters domestically, and eventually went on to gross more than 80 million dollars in the United States and upwards of 140 million dollars worldwide by the end of its theatrical release period. From there, Die Hard was nominated for four academy awards: best sound effects editing, best film editing, best sound, and best visual effects (“Die Hard.” IMDb). It soon after spawned several sequels and came to establish new conventions of the action genre that were adopted into a majority of action films and television shows in the coming decades thereafter. What then was it about Die Hard, a Christmas-action film at its simplest, that allowed the film to achieve such public and professional success? 

Die Hard is the story of New York City cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) who finds himself in the middle of a ruthless heist that interrupts the holiday party he is attending for his estranged wife’s new place of work in the city of Los Angeles on Christmas Eve. The thieves – who effectively become terrorists by the way in which they execute their robbery – are led by the well-groomed and intelligent Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), who masks the heist under the guise of political outrage in an effort to distract the LAPD and FBI from his true goal: to escape with the $640 million dollars in bearer bonds locked in Nakatomi vaults (Lichtenfeld 160). There also exists a subplot, one that matches the structure of the primary plot completely, but focuses on John’s personal issues with his wife, Holly, and by the end of which John leads himself to redemption for and resolution with those issues (Lichtenfeld 160). The film follows a basic three-act structure: act 1 builds up to the inciting incident; act 2 follows John up until he kills Hans; and act 3 ends with the resolution and redemption of the major characters of the film – namely John and Sgt. Al Powell. The subplot between John. And Holly follows this primary three-act structure almost beat-by-beat: act 1 builds up to Johns first face-to-face conversation with Holly; act 2 follows Holly and John through to John saving Holly from Hans; and act 3 ends with John and Holly riding off together into the night. However, despite following major thematic and filmic conventions of the action genre, director John McTiernan does bend – not break – the rules of convention as well – which is what makes Die Hard a unique action film.

The first bending of convention is seen in McTiernan’s use of smart and extensive exposition. Take, for example, the first two conversations that John has in the film – the first on the plane with his seat-neighbor and the second in the limousine with Argyle, the limo driver. In those first 8 minutes, and through those two conversations, the audience learns that John gets anxious about flying (and possibly heights), is a police officer, of his broken marriage, and understand that he is a normal guy given the fact that he is sitting shotgun in a limo arranged to drive him to the holiday party. McTiernan utilizes the first 20 minutes of the film (the whole first act) to paint a pretty detailed picture of John’s character – who he is as a person, what he wants at this time, and what matters to him. This ties into the second bending of convention, which is the overall pace of the movie. Again, the audience is not introduced to any action in the film until 20 minutes into the story – something quite unheard of in action movies where the opening sequence is quite often a bloodbath of action. This slower pacing (slower than most action films that is) not only allows for the film to not feel rushed, thus giving the audience the time to invest in each character’s storyline, but also builds the tension between characters and anticipation of action, thus making the sudden show of an action-packed scene more thrilling (Lichtenfeld 168). While these elements helped to make Die Hard a unique and interesting action film, they are not what make the story of a rouge-cop waging a war with thieves who have taken over an office building memorable, relatable, or lovable even. It seems that in the case of Die Hard, the most engaging factor of the film is not the physical action nor the storyline, but instead the individual characters in and of themselves – the most engaging and relatable of all being the iconic protagonist himself, John McClane (Lichtenfeld 165). 

In many young men’s minds, perhaps, the film Die Hard may be considered the epitome of a form of the masculine American identity, and the character of John McClane then may be considered the epitome of American masculinity. There are many qualities that together create the masculine identity and, moreover, there are many ways in which this identity manifests. Being a man, however, is more than just biology – more than just more than just “my body alone defines my manhood.” If gender exists as a socio-cultural construct, then the state of being a “man” exists in a state of performativity – “performativity of gender is a stylized repetition of acts, an imitation of the dominant conventions of gender”, which is justified by the idea that discourse creates subject positions for one to occupy (Butler, 15). When watching Die Hard, there are many words that one may use to describe the masculine performativity of protagonist John McClane: power, strength, endurance, resilience, and – perhaps most surprisingly – vulnerability. Vulnerability is often a state that is not affiliated to the hegemonic masculine (Shimizu & Parren 42). In the case of John McClane, however, his underlying vulnerability in the construction and presentation of his manhood though his expressions of violence are exposed as the film progresses. 

John McClane himself is a normal man, a flawed character, as seen through his exposition in the first act of the film. Given that he is a flawed character, he could have left at the first sign of danger, – there was a literal exit sign above the door where he first escaped – but instead John decided to stay due his professional ethics as a police officer and his personal morals – though not for the sake of playing hero, but rather out of his perceived responsibility to do what is right. Throughout the second act, we see John’s masculine performativity of violence (that is, his performative actions that make him the man that he is) emerge, fueled by his perseverance, his dedication to “what is right”, and (as well as in spite of) his vulnerability. Armed with an AK47, a handgun and a bag of explosives near the beginning of the second act, it seems as if John has a chance to succeed. Throughout the second act, John undergoes a series of battles until he reaches his final opponent, Hans. However, though John wins each battle leading up to his final one, each these battles progressively take a little more out of him, making him physically and mentally vulnerable over time – the climax of that vulnerability occurring moments after the broken glass scene where John is in the bathroom coming to terms with his physical injuries (shards of glass in his foot) and his personal wrongdoings (O’Brien 18). Despite this physical and mental wear, however, Johns continued performativity of violence as fueled by his perseverance and determination to do what is right is what not only makes John a man, but a good man worth rooting for - and it is this that we as the audience are draw to. We want to see John succeed because of his good-nature and his determination, for it is through the repetitive observation of these qualities that he has proven to the audience that he is worth their time and investment. 

Furthermore, if it is John’s masculine performativity of violence that proves to the audience that he is a man worth rooting for, then it is the fantasy that John’s storyline and character-arch provides that proves to the audience that he is a man worth rooting for time and time again – and what ultimately gave Die Hard its blockbuster status. John is a normal man given the opportunity to become a hero and redeem himself in the process – this idea is the fantasy of Die Hardthat we as an audience literally buy into. The exploitation of fantasy can do one of two things: to exist as a means of escaping reality, or to exist as a means of illuminating reality (Wood 162). In the case of Die Hard, perhaps the exploitation of this particular fantasy does a bit of both. We see through his performativity that John is strong, courageous, skilled – all qualities that we hope to have or gain; we also see that John is vulnerable – a quality that we all have. John is everything that many of us hope to be, but what separates John from other action protagonists is that we feel like we can maybe, just maybe, we have a chance to become someone like him too. In a bit of a meta instance in the film, John himself plays into this fantasy that we as consumers of Die Hard are buying into. In an exchange with Hans through the walkie-talkies, Hans rhetorically asks John, “You know my name but who are you? Just another American who saw too many movies as a child? Another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he’s John Wayne? Rambo? Marshal Dillon?” to which John replies, “Was always kinda partial to Roy Rogers actually” (Die Hard  1988). Later on, when John finally starts to correspond with the LAPD, in particular with Sgt. Al Powell, he gives himself the code-name Roy, primarily in an effort to keep his identity hidden and thus Holly’s identity safe – but also in effect to live out this fantasy that Die Hard sells, which is the possibility for a normal person to become a hero. At its most complex, Die Hard, is a redemption story. Why do we love a good redemption story? Because we’ve all done bad things, things that we hope we can redeem ourselves from. And John McClane? Well, he has the ultimate redemption story.

References

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.  New York: Routledge, 1990. 

“Die Hard.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 20 July 1988, www.imdb.com/title/tt0095016/.

O’Brien, Harvey. Action Movies the Cinema of Striking Back. Columbia University Press, 2012.

Lichtenfeld, Eric. “Blowing up all those familiar places: Terror and the confined arena” Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie . Praeger, 2004, pp 159- 189.

McTiernan, John, director. Die Hard. Amazon, 20th Century Fox, 1988, www.amazon.com/Die-Hard-Bruce Willis/dp/B009EEQO08/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=doe%2Bhard&qid=1583230 534&sr=8-1.

Shimizu, Celine and Parren, Celine. “With Vulnerable Strength: Re-Signifying the Sexual Manhood of Bruce Lee.” Straitjacket Sexualities: Unbinding Asian American Manhoods in the Movies. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012, 33-81. 

Wood, Robin. Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan… And Beyond. Columbia University Press, 1986, doi:10.7312/wood91452.