Die Hard (R)
20th Century Studios; AFI Catalog; IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; TV Tropes; Wikia; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; Hulu; Movies Anywhere; Vudu; YouTube

This came out in 1988, but I don't recall ever seeing it until 2024. It's based on a book called "Nothing Lasts Forever", which I've never heard of and wouldn't know about if not for Wikipedia. Of course, I knew some things about the movie, because it's rather iconic. Like, I knew the name John McClane, and I knew one of his lines. I also knew there is a longstanding debate about whether or not this is a Christmas movie, just because it's set on Christmas Eve. I'm not going to enter that fray with an opinion of my own, but I will link to my review in both "action movies" and "holiday movies", just to be safe.

I actually started watching the movie on Hulu at one point, I don't remember if it was in late 2023 or early 2024, but I stopped for some reason, and didn't continue for months afterward, so I don't remember the beginning so well. But there's an NYPD cop named John McClane (Bruce Willis), who comes to L.A. on Christmas Eve, hoping to reconcile with his estranged wife, Holly Gennaro (Bonnie Bedelia), who is an executive in the Nakatomi Corporation. John is driven to Nakatomi Plaza by a chauffer named Argyle, who then waits in the parking garage.

Some more stuff happens, like John talking with Holly, but I basically resumed the movie at the time that a group of thieves (who everyone believes are terrorists) led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) arrive at the Nakatomi building and take over. They take the 30 or so employees remaining in the building hostage, and set to work breaking into a vault to steal 640 million dollars in bearer bonds. Meanwhile, John was in a different room from the employees, who were having a Christmas party, and when he finds out about the thieves, he tries to stop them. He eventually radios for help, and a LAPD sergeant named Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson) is sent to investigate, and eventually starts communicating with John via radio. Later, a bunch of police show up, led by Deputy Chief Dwayne Robinson, who clashes with Al and is basically a dick, and doesn't seem particularly competent. Later still, a couple of FBI agents, both named Johnson, show up and take over the scene outside Nakatomi Tower, and they're also kind of dicks. And there's a douchey reporter named Richard Thornburg (William Atherton), who takes advantage of the hostage situation to try to advance his career.

Well, a lot of stuff happens that I don't want to go into detail about. Suffice to say, Hans is an awesome villain, but John wins in the end (but not without a couple of employees being killed, and a ton of damage being done to the Nakatomi building). It was a pretty good movie, but I didn't like it as much as some people (such as Jake Peralta from Brooklyn Nine-Nine). And there's something about Al's backstory that is supposed to make us feel sympathy for him, but mostly just reinforces a distrust of cops, in my opinion.

I don't know how much interest I have in ever watching the sequels, but we'll see. (I actually think I saw one of the sequels in a theater, but I don't remember which one, or anything about the movie.)