2013 Muriels: 25th Anniversary Award for Best Film of 1988

I like our winner a lot, but I'll admit disappointment that our third-place winner didn't get more support. Alas! To it we go!

Third place:



My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki) [82 points / 13 votes]

Second place:



Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg) [123 points / 18 votes]

And your winner...



Die Hard (John McTiernan) [133 points / 20 votes]

"Let us pause for a moment to reflect on the absurdity of the idea as Die Hard as the best film of 1988. Produced by the big-studio assembly line of Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver and directed by journeyman filmmaker—and future convict—John McTiernan, the film calls to mind endless airings on basic cable, a cheerfully profane catchphrase and a high-concept shorthand for an action film confined to a single location (to wit: 2013’s “Die Hard... at the White House”). In the twenty-five years since its release the film has transformed former television star Bruce Willis into a Reagan-era icon and international superstar and launched a surprisingly enduring franchise that saw its fifth installment released last winter. Sure, it’s fun and makes a fine alternative to It's a Wonderful Life as Christmas season perennials go, but great cinema?

Allow me then to make the case that Die Hard, isolated from the four increasingly wearying sequels it spawned, is the finest action film of the 1980’s, which would then place it high in the running for the greatest action film of all time. Crafted with a watchmaker’s precision (there is literally not a single wasted camera move or extraneous line of dialogue) and a modest budget that subsequent installments would blow to smithereens, the original Die Hard remains, in spite of its reputation, a reluctantly violent and, dare I say thoughtful, entry into the action genre. If you truly love these kinds of films, this as high a watermark as they come.

While later films would reduce the character to an indifferent, chrome-domed, Harrier-jet-surfing action figure, the John McClane we meet in this film is defined by his vulnerability. A working-class police officer with a receding hairline, a flabby midsection and a marriage hanging by a thread, McClane is thrust into a socially uncomfortable situation (a corporate Christmas party) where he’s confronted not only by his own financial inadequacy but his estranged wife’s newfound independence which collides with her ongoing frustration at his knuckle-dragging ways. Willis (who famously spends most of the film barefoot and wearing a dirty, wife-beater) doesn’t just look the part of an everyman; with his crumbling marriage, stagnant career and uncertain future, he’s cursed with the sort of sobering real world problems that make a terrorist attack look like a speed bump.

Released a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Die Hard continues the long tradition of allowing the Cold War to be fought out on screen, with McClane pitted against a dozen well-armed and highly trained European mercenaries who make overtures to geo-politics and culture but are little more than common thieves. The film is at its core a “slobs vs. snobs” underdog story, with McClane scrambling across catwalks and through air ducts, relying on impish guile instead of brute strength or advanced weaponry; rather than the films of Willis's roided-out, granite-chiseled contemporaries Stallone and Schwarzenegger, Die Hard plays out as a chess match between poorly matched opponents with our hero’s only real advantage being his seemingly limitless capacity for improvisation.

Stephen E. de Souza and Jeb Stuart’s screenplay (working off the Roderick Thorp novel Nothing Lasts Forever) is a model of economic writing, planting stray details (making “balls with your feet,” the McClane family portrait, Holly’s Rolex) that flower beautifully throughout the film. There’s an unfussy confidence to the way the film parcels out plot, placing the viewer in the same mindset as the characters; trying to make sense of stray details (most of the action is driven by the pursuit of a bag of detonators absentmindedly slung over McClane’s shoulder, the purpose of which aren’t revealed until the last twenty minutes) until the final picture comes into focus. Yet for all its shark-like efficiency, the film is fundamentally egalitarian and generous towards its characters; witness John’s pained, would-be farewell to his wife, the redemptive arc of a comic relief character like Reginald VelJohnson’s Sgt. Al Powell, and, of course, the self-amused contempt of chief terrorist/tailored suit aficionado Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman, establishing the template for Euro-trash villains for decades with his equal parts menace and effete exasperation).

For all the popularity of “vulgar auteurism” in recent years, McTiernan’s direction is a welcome corrective, striking a classical almost elegant tone while still packing the requisite punches (and bullets and explosions). The film favors boom shots and long takes that allow the geography of Nakatomi Plaza (aka 20th Century Fox’s corporate offices) and the Los Angeles skyline to take center stage while creating an upstairs-downstairs dynamic as its cuts between ostentatious corporate offices and steam filled basements and service-ways. Shot in ultra-expansive anamorphic scope (and this is, for my money, *the* lens flare film) the film’s compositions only seem to heighten the “now I know what a TV dinner feels like” claustrophobia of McClane shimmying through conduits and down elevator shafts. And speaking of classical, this film does for Beethoven what 2001: A Space Odyssey did for Strauss and Apocalypse Now for Wagner, planting the earworm of “Ode to Joy” into the consciousness of an entire generation of young film fans.

But what I keep coming back to in my head is Willis’s performance as McClane, which feels like all the more a revelation as the actor has subsequently proven so prone to disengaging from the films surrounding him. McClane’s smart-alecky asides feel less like a writer’s crutch and more like a flimsy shield, deflecting the very real terror that he could die at any moment (the film’s title not withstanding). People remember the image of the McClane jumping off the roof of a skyscraper, but do they also remember that we’re introduced to the character clinching the armrest of his airplane seat because he’s afraid of flying? Nothing comes easy to this character, who arrived at a time in pop culture when our heroes were always bigger, faster, stronger and better. McClane isn’t a commando or a terminator, he’s a guy who smokes too much, doesn’t understand how to work a computer and is too proud to say he’s “sorry.” He was your dad or your uncle or you on your best day. I’m not ultimately sure if Die Hard is really more than an amusement park ride: it’s loud, it moves along a predictable track, and it mostly offers cheap thrills. But try holding that against it when you’re frequently being thrown to the edge of your seat." -- Andrew Dignan

See the full results.