I watched Die Hard for the 82nd time last night. Despite my current art house pretensions, I return to this “dumb” action movie time and again. Unlike other violent pre-pubescent favorites (The Mummy, Rocky 3) Die Hard’s bloody ingenuity still casts a spell. The reason might be deeper and more political than you’d think.
Firstly, Die Hard gives me pangs of nostalgia. Watching it sends me back to my quaint childhood of video stores and their assorted fantasies of adulthood. War: Braveheart. Sex: James Bond. Crime: Batman. Yet, above all else, Die Hard became my template for rugged masculinity. John McClane was my aspiration.
He symbolized the working class everyman. He wasn’t urbane and exotic like James Bond. He wasn't a steroidal god like Stallone or Schwarzenegger. And he certainly wasn’t a superhero chosen by providence to save us all. He was a wise ass New York cop who liked to smoke and curse. He looked good in a wifebeater, but not too good. He loved his family, but he didn't like his careerist wife, Holly, dropping his last name to fit in with her well to do friends. Stuck at Holly’s corporate christmas party in LA, John is a rumpled fish out of water. At eight I subconsciously took notes.
When the terrorists commandeer the building, John fights off a few, but he really wants to get the cops over pronto. He gets one on a walkie talkie, who officiously informs him he’s making an FCC violation and that he should call 911 to report a crime. The phone lines are dead and John screams, “NO SHIT LADY YOU THINK I'M ORDERING A FUCKING PIZZA.”
Even when the cops do get wise, their leadership continually undermines John’s walkie talkie advice. The deputy commissioner is a gung ho moron, and John’s only friend is another put upon order taker, the soulful Sergeant Powell (the dad on Family Matters). Separated by a building full of explosives and terrorists, Powell and John form an effortless camaraderie. John, a white cop from New York and Powell, a black one from LA have a heroic working class solidarity.
John continues to fight off the terrorists one by one, dodging their bullets and the LAPD’s stupidity at the same time. Unlike a comic book hero, John’s body brutally bares the brunt of his assault. His feet bleed and his T shirt turns from white to brown with sweat, blood and grime.
With Holly still in the hostage room, her cokehead yuppie colleague, Ellis, tries to negotiate with the terrorists, only succeeding in getting himself killed and her identity revealed. This, along with the FBI’s rote meddling ("FBI terrorist playbook") sends the movie to its thrilling, explosive conclusion.
Of course, despite all odds, John and Powell save the day. Holly rides away with John in a limo as Let it Snow plays and the credits roll. She tells an obnoxious reporter her last name is McClane.
So, let’s see. Local bureaucracy: stupid. Federal bureaucracy: haughtily stupid. Common man: savior. Formerly careerist wife: saved and repentant. Sounds a little...conservative?
Yet, the powerful private sector, as represented by Ellis, is no savior. For all its money and hedonistic splendor, it is impotent when faced with a loaded gun. And who are the heroes? Civil servants getting paid tax payer money. John McClane is no Ayn Rand fantasy.
What Die Hard affirms is a mythic macho populism that is quintessentially american and cannot be easily slotted as liberal or conservative, good or bad. Villainous thief Hans Gruber, pretending to be a lefty terrorist, critiques John’s heroics as a symptom of american capitalism's great archetype: The Cowboy. Defiant and proud, John shoots back “Yippee-kay-yay mother”- well you know.
The subjects of great myths are rarely progressive, or even ethical. Zeus is a womanizing, murderous tyrant, after all. Much of the Die Hard myth is, as us kids say, problematic, yet this does not tarnish its captivating power, it's cruel resonance. If anything, a myth’s contrast with the modern world makes it more poetic.
Despite the well armed forces aligned against it, the Die Hard myth has truly died hard. And for that reason, I continue to watch it, channeling that 8 year old boy. He lives.
