1988 and the undisputed number one action star was that Austrian body builder with the funny name with that monosylabic guy from ROCKY in second place . The thing I hated about Arnie and Sly is that their action movies were uninvolving with over blown battle scenes where the good guys never seemed to be in danger of dying . I was also going to bring the James Bond franchise into the conversation but the series became a parody when Bond stopped speaking with a Scottish accent sometime in the early 70s
DIE HARD is different to the other 80s action fests with John McLane being a fairly believable genre character . Okay he`s two dimensional but that`s got to be one dimension more than John Rambo who only exists to kill a lot of nasty commies so Americans can flock to the cinema . It`s also interesting to note that McLane`s wife is used in the plot which is slightly different from how most action films work out where the hero is normally single , but that`s probably because DIE HARD as more depth to it than many contemparies. Perhaps the biggest difference is that McLane is slightly flawed as we`re shown one scene where the hero gives the bad guys something they want , not something you`d see in a Arnie or Sly movie . I won`t mention the stunts or the tightly written set pieces or how compelling they are because everyone else has beat me to it , except to say that big explosions and gun fights often overwhelm an action movie ( Bond movies are a good example ) but here they occur from the narrative instead of someone cramming them into the script in a vain attempt to thrill the audience .
Normally I`d have a fit that an action blockbuster is well inside the IMDB top 250 but DIE HARD does deserve to be there since it`s the best movie of its type of its era .
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