Die Hard

A couple of questions before we begin:

1. Why Germans? Would the movie suffer terribly if the terrorists were American or Samoan or Soviet? I feel that it would but I can't explain why.

2. Is the near total Japanese ownership of late 1980s American business the reason why John McClane defeats the Germans only after Mr. Takagi gets shot in the head? We're three for three in second World War propagators, but the politics seems to have changed.

Anyway, we all know the real hero of this movie is Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber. The plot, in the parlance of our times, is ludicrous, and you recognize her of course. But Hans is utterly charming as the cloth-conscious, effeminate Eurotrash terrorist. Watching him is like watching a gay bird build its nest, and while the overall experience is quite boring, actually, despite the "forty stories of sheer adventure!" Hans Gruber makes the movie, like our banks, too big to fail. I bet that when you look back on Die Hard, you think of one of only three things: Al's twinkies, John's cowboy catch phrase, or Alan Rickman's beard, memorialized here a la Che Guevara:

Yes, culture recognizes the enduring truth of two Reagan era noumena: the awesomeness of Hans Gruber, and the superior awesomeness of Hans Gruber action figures:

With gun and CB walkie:

Notice that the pack includes two different John McClanes, the second bearing the terrorist stigmata of bloodied feet: "Karl, schieß auf das fenster. . . shoot the glass!" Can you imagine any other 1980s antagonist speaking such a line? Of course not. Only one man has the poet in him:

And I apologize to those expecting to see the poster of Nakatomi plaza, burning roof and all. That image, though iconic, cannot compete with the festivals of patience: unnecessary text and a "coming soon" advertisement for a movie now twenty years old.