Post by klep on May 4, 2020 7:01:30 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 5/4: Die Hard
ACTION WEEK!
The 80s and 90s were a decade that was rife with action movies of a certain kind. Films where One Man had to take on a host of troubles and, by opposing, end them. Lantern-jawed avatars of machismo waded through scores of bad guys to rescue the damsel in distress. Many guns were fired with implausibly large clips of ammunition. Many punches were thrown with few signs of fatigue. Many laws were broken and much property destroyed with little in the way of consequence. And many wounds were suffered with apparently no ill effects whatsoever.
And then there's Die Hard. Die Hard breaks the mold of these kinds of movies a bit. There's still the property damage, the implausible ammunition supplies, and the punching, but John McClane (Bruce Willis) has something most of his compatriots didn't. He had vulnerability.
McClane gets hurt in Die Hard. A lot. You can tell he feels every blow that lands, and each one makes subsequent fights harder. When he has to walk across broken glass, you feel it and you can tell he feels it too. Every fight takes it's toll on him, and he gets grimier, bloodier, and more visibly exhausted and spent with each fight. By the film's end he can barely even walk, saving what little he has left for one last desperate ploy.
But McClane's vulnerability is more than just physical, it's emotional as well. He puts on the face of a tough, macho New York cop, but he's got more going on underneath that. He sounds like an asshole when he resurrects an old argument with his estranged wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), but as soon as she leaves the room he's recriminating himself for being an asshole. He's scared through the whole ordeal. When he's on the two-way to Al (Reginald VelJohnson) while picking the glass out of his feet, he clearly is resigned to the idea that he's not making it out alive. That moment is truly the emotional climax of the film - the point where McClane can finally say out loud that he was wrong and insufficiently supportive of his wife, and that he's sorry.
Of course, it's not perfect. It would have been better if we'd seen him say those words directly to his wife. The fact that he saves her in the end by taking off the watch she'd been given by her company to celebrate her accomplishments feels like a misstep, and without seeing that conversation her readiness to reclaim his name feels a little unearned. It's also a little weird that the resolution of Al's story is that he's able to kill people again - even if the person in question is unquestionably about to shoot up a crowd with a machine gun.
But perhaps that's as much progressiveness as we could expect from a Reagan-era picture in a genre so dominated by absurd levels of testosterone. Those moments of self-awareness and contrition are certainly more than we got in other similar films of the era. As Die Hard became a franchise each subsequent installment seemed to leech more and more of the humanity from John McClane until he resembled Schwarzenegger's Terminator more than an actual person, but at least this once we got a One Man action film where the protagonist seemed like he was actually capable of being hurt - both on the outside and the inside.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 5/11: NausicaƤ of the Valley of the Winds
NATURE WEEK!
For Nature Week we'll be diving into the world of animation with one if Hayao Miyazaki's earliest films, NausicaƤ and the Valley of the Winds. Come join our discussion next week of this film about a young girl struggling to save her world from the destructive potential of two opposing factions. NausicaƤ is available for digital purchase in the usual places.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 5/5: Working Girl
The next pairing's theme is women in the workplace, starting with Mike Nichols' Working Girl and ending with the new film from Kitty Green, The Assistant. Join us Wednesday for our discussion of the earlier film, available for rent in most of the usual places.
ACTION WEEK!
The 80s and 90s were a decade that was rife with action movies of a certain kind. Films where One Man had to take on a host of troubles and, by opposing, end them. Lantern-jawed avatars of machismo waded through scores of bad guys to rescue the damsel in distress. Many guns were fired with implausibly large clips of ammunition. Many punches were thrown with few signs of fatigue. Many laws were broken and much property destroyed with little in the way of consequence. And many wounds were suffered with apparently no ill effects whatsoever.
And then there's Die Hard. Die Hard breaks the mold of these kinds of movies a bit. There's still the property damage, the implausible ammunition supplies, and the punching, but John McClane (Bruce Willis) has something most of his compatriots didn't. He had vulnerability.
McClane gets hurt in Die Hard. A lot. You can tell he feels every blow that lands, and each one makes subsequent fights harder. When he has to walk across broken glass, you feel it and you can tell he feels it too. Every fight takes it's toll on him, and he gets grimier, bloodier, and more visibly exhausted and spent with each fight. By the film's end he can barely even walk, saving what little he has left for one last desperate ploy.
But McClane's vulnerability is more than just physical, it's emotional as well. He puts on the face of a tough, macho New York cop, but he's got more going on underneath that. He sounds like an asshole when he resurrects an old argument with his estranged wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), but as soon as she leaves the room he's recriminating himself for being an asshole. He's scared through the whole ordeal. When he's on the two-way to Al (Reginald VelJohnson) while picking the glass out of his feet, he clearly is resigned to the idea that he's not making it out alive. That moment is truly the emotional climax of the film - the point where McClane can finally say out loud that he was wrong and insufficiently supportive of his wife, and that he's sorry.
Of course, it's not perfect. It would have been better if we'd seen him say those words directly to his wife. The fact that he saves her in the end by taking off the watch she'd been given by her company to celebrate her accomplishments feels like a misstep, and without seeing that conversation her readiness to reclaim his name feels a little unearned. It's also a little weird that the resolution of Al's story is that he's able to kill people again - even if the person in question is unquestionably about to shoot up a crowd with a machine gun.
But perhaps that's as much progressiveness as we could expect from a Reagan-era picture in a genre so dominated by absurd levels of testosterone. Those moments of self-awareness and contrition are certainly more than we got in other similar films of the era. As Die Hard became a franchise each subsequent installment seemed to leech more and more of the humanity from John McClane until he resembled Schwarzenegger's Terminator more than an actual person, but at least this once we got a One Man action film where the protagonist seemed like he was actually capable of being hurt - both on the outside and the inside.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 5/11: NausicaƤ of the Valley of the Winds
NATURE WEEK!
For Nature Week we'll be diving into the world of animation with one if Hayao Miyazaki's earliest films, NausicaƤ and the Valley of the Winds. Come join our discussion next week of this film about a young girl struggling to save her world from the destructive potential of two opposing factions. NausicaƤ is available for digital purchase in the usual places.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 5/5: Working Girl
The next pairing's theme is women in the workplace, starting with Mike Nichols' Working Girl and ending with the new film from Kitty Green, The Assistant. Join us Wednesday for our discussion of the earlier film, available for rent in most of the usual places.