Mr. Mr. I guess. Are you
still there? Yeah, I'm still here.
Unless you won't open a front door for me.
I'm afraid not. But you have me at a loss.
You know my name, but who are you? Just another American who
saw too many movies as a child. Another orphan of a
bankrupt culture who thinks he's John Wayne, Rambo,
Marshall Dillon. I was always kind of partial to Roy
Rogers, actually. I really like those sequined shirts.
Do you really think you have a chance against us, Mr. Cowboy?
Yippie ki yay, motherfucker.
It's Two Dads, One Movie. It's the podcast where two middle-aged
dads sit around and shoot the shit about the movies of the 80s and 90s.
Here are your hosts, Steve Followow and Nick Briana.
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Two Dads, One Movie.
I'm Steve. And I'm Nick. And today we're talking about the 1988 action Christmas
classic Die Hard. It is the fourth window of our dadvent calendar
that we've opened up this year. And if you don't agree with us that Die
Hard is actually a Christmas movie, bye bye. Bye bye.
You're going. You can turn it off now. See it. It's clearly a Christmas movie.
There's no denying it. Yeah, this was one of my picks for us. And you
know, what do you even say about a movie like Die Hard?
What do we even
How do we even preface this? It's just it's one of the best, like every
man action movies, right? Where it's not a Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Rambo, like unkillable, you know,
the action hero is vulnerable, which is super fun and works
in movies since. But I think before this was not a real common, you know,
idea in action movies. Yeah, no, there wasn't much of the main guy getting beat
up because it would either be like a cop type, a dirty Harry type guy.
Right. Yeah, or like a superhuman, like a muscle guy. Predator, Commando, Rambo, stuff like
that, which are also a ton of fun as well. But this was great.
Bruce Willis really kind of broke the mold in a lot of ways of 80s
action heroes. And we're gonna get into it, but there's a lot that was done
in this movie that then carried on through the 90s in action movies that were
really-- that were started here in this movie. It's a lot of fun to watch,
and we're gonna have a ton of fun talking about it. And Nick, what's your
history with Die Hard? Oh, man. So, yeah, I probably saw this
sometime in high school, I think, would probably would probably be the time when I
was getting into the R-rated action movies and stuff. But, man, I mean, this was
so enjoyable the first time and the second time and every subsequent
time to watch. It's just your perfect, like, Blockbuster action movie.
There's something for everyone. There's humor, there's a. There's a great lead character,
there's a good villain, there's a good group of, like, sub bosses with the villain.
And just the way it progresses, it, like, it's. It's fun to follow the
stuff that he has to overcome is.
Is really interesting relative to other action movies that had come out at the time.
And yeah, and the Christmas element, I mean, it's a reason once a year to
make your wife watch it with you. Yes, absolutely fun.
Christmas movie, great action movie. And I do agree with you, like the, you know,
the cast, the kind of supporting cast, there's a bunch of like, both on both
sides on the sort of terrorist, quote unquote, you know, the bad guy side,
and then on the cop side, there's a bunch of like cannon fodder characters that
like we don't care about, but there's at least three or four on each side
of the aisle that are like really interesting, pretty well developed. We actually kind of
care about them in one way or another, either like,
oh, they're scary, or they're funny, or they're whatever, you know, kind of thing,
not care about them necessarily, like we give a crap what happens to them,
but they're like interesting enough to keep us kind of going with them.
And that's great. I think too many action movies, you've got like the hero,
and then everybody else is just like henchmen. Like one hero, one villain, and then
nobody cares, you know. And this is a much more fleshed out group of characters.
All right, let's jump into the facts on Die Hard. Die Hard
did not come out around Christmas. It was a summer blockbuster. It came out on
July 18th, 1988, with an R rating. Rating, a running time of 132
minutes, which might be, it's among the longest movies we've done. It's up there with
the others that are long. Directed by John McTiernan, written by Jeb
Stuart and Steven E. D'Souza from the novel by Roderick Thorp, starring Bruce
Willis, Alan Rickman, and Bonnie Bedelia, but also Reginald VelJohnson and
a whole bunch of other great people as well. Was Bonnie Bedelia the third Bonnie
Bedelia? She was actually the second build in the movie. If you watch the credits
in the movie, it's Bruce Willis 1, Bonnie Bedelia 2. So... Is she married to
John McTiernan? No, she just had, she had a bit of a career
before this movie. And so she was a bit of a name. Certainly there were
a lot of people in this movie that were kind of, if not in their
first movie or anything, they were still kind of up and coming as stars.
And so she was close to that at the time. Rotten Tomatoes,
94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. IMDb,
8.2, incredibly high score. And of course we
have a thumbs up from Gene Siskel and a thumbs down from the contrarian
Roger Ebert. I don't know how you give this movie a thumbs down. Really,
but it was nominated for four Oscars, kind of the action movie quartet
of best sound, best sound editing, best film editing, and best visual effects.
And it was added to the National Film Registry in 2017.
On a budget of $28 million, which in 1988 was a pretty hefty sum of
money, it pulled in 140.8 million in the box office for five
times its budget, which is a bona fide smash hit.
So those are the facts on Die Hard. And yeah,
let's jump into it. We start off with flying into
LAX. The first thing we see is a plane landing and we get the
white knuckle grip of the plane, of the seat from who we
find out is Bruce Willis. This is John McClane. This is our hero. He's a
cop from New York flying to LA to visit his, you know,
they're not divorced or anything, but somewhat estranged wife. But before we learn all of
that, his seatmate, his little neighbor there is his businessman who apparently
had been wearing a three-piece suit suede, but took the jacket off. He's looked very
dressed up. And he goes, oh, you don't like flying? You know, this is the
secret. When you get where you're going, you take off your shoes and your socks,
you walk around on the carpet, you make fists with your toes. Make fists.
I know it sounds crazy. I know it sounds crazy. Yeah. And he's like,
oh, okay, I'll try that. And as he gets up, of course, he's got his,
his sidearm, his pistol in a, in a holster under his arm. And the guy
notices, like, okay. He's like, oh, no, no, it's okay. I'm a cop. Like,
I've been doing this. You know, trust me, I've been doing this for 11 years,
whatever. Yeah. Kind of a funny exchange, but it reminded me, like,
I Can
cops even fly with weapons? Yeah, I think so. Okay. All right. I kind of
figured possibly, but it's if you're just a random, like, oh, I'm in an Antioch
cop and I'm going to Hawaii. I don't know if you can just bring your.
He's on vacation. You can. And, you know, there's all these, I don't know if
you know this genre of internet video where it's like a fake airplane setup
where they have like an airplane freak out, but it's totally fake. Oh, yeah.
It's not really on a plane. Yeah. You know, and it's, and I remember seeing
one where it's this guy where they're like,
Sir, you have to put your seatbelt on. And he's like, I'm an FBI agent.
You're blowing my cover right now. It's like, this shit is so stupid.
I would feel less comfortable if there were just dudes like taking down
Jack and Coxs with a gun on an airplane. Seems like a bad idea.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know that any random off-duty cop should be
able to carry a gun on a plane. But I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.
I'm not sure how the rules work. Anyway, so we see him, he arrives at
LAX, and then I think the next thing we see right away, we go to
Nakatomi Plaza and the Christmas party happening on the 30th floor.
On Christmas Eve at the office. Once again, once again, just a great
trading place. Cinema, terrible for work-life balance. Yeah, it's real bad. Oh, we just want
to show appreciation to the people that work here and make them stay
at their desks for another six hours on the biggest holiday of the year for
their family. But yeah, one funny thing there. So we have
Holly, who's Holly McLean, Holly Gennaro, who's John's
wife that he's coming to visit. She's a big, big wig executive there who
looks like she's wearing a big wig herself. And her
assistant, Assistant is this pregnant woman who's finishing up her day of work,
and she's just like, I'm gonna go join the party. Do you think the baby
can handle a little sip? Which I really like that.
That's a very 1988. But then she also says,
that baby's ready to tend bar. And I'm like, Lady, you're a mother
of two. You know that's not true. Come on now. But yeah,
the fist with your toes thing, I mean, we know that this is a device
that needs to happen to get John McLean's
shoes off. Brilliant. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because it,
it's like, it disguises this thing that could happen in
such a stupid way later. Yeah. And it's such a smart way to get you
to this position that's, like, illogical otherwise. Yeah. When, when we have him running
around Barefoot without this sort of, you know, Preamble about the, the fists with
the toes or whatever, we would all be asking, why the hell did he take
his shoes off? He's, he's had a, a party in an office. He was,
like, in the bathroom or whatever. It wasn't even a private bathroom because, yeah,
Holly mentions she's gunning for Ellis's private bathroom or whatever. So she's taken him to,
like, a hallway bathroom, and now he's taking his shoes. Socks off and like,
it was just all kind of weird. Yeah. But at least with this little bit
of like beforehand we get, oh, okay. He's trying out that fist with his toes
thing. Okay, fine. You know, and you're right, but it's a tiny thing and what
it works nicely. And we will absolutely get to that. Holly does call
home. She's wondering where John might be if he called in before he got on
his flight. So his, her daughter Lucy answers, very cute, you know, McLean residence,
you know, whatever. And then she also then speaks to Paulina, who is like the
housekeeper nanny. Basically, you know, she's the one who's there with the kids
while Holly's at work and, and just is is confirms that no, Mr.
McClane did not call no telephono, she says,
which is a very like fuego kind of thing. But that's
okay. But yeah, so she confirms no, Mr. McClane did not phone
in. Yeah. So McClane, he's off the plane here. I know I
skipped ahead a little bit. No, no, no. Yeah, we're good. Fist with their toes.
But he's off the plane and he's kind of like giving this look around like,
oh, California, can you believe it? And the things that he sees is
her boyfriend's arms. I used to think that was crazy. And then I realized she's
wearing, like, tights as pants, which today
is 1,000% normal. Yeah, that's true. In 1988,
nobody went out in public like that. That's true. I mean, nobody. His seatmate wearing
a three-piece suit on the plane, which is how people used to be like,
well, I'm gonna be out in the world traveling, representing my family crest. I better
get dressed up. There's a moment in the movie, which I will have to watch
this one, too, at some point, Last Action Hero. I don't know if you've ever
seen that one. Righteous, yeah. Comment because they're in the movie world and the kid
comments about how the women are dressed. And at the time, it seemed psychotic that
they were dressed so scantily. And now it's like, no, that's just kind of where
the culture went. So, yeah, I think he's commenting on the fact that this woman
is basically out wearing tights and nothing else for people. There's no skirt over it
or anything else, which in '88 would have been scandalous, basically. And he's like,
California. He's like, oh, California. He can't believe it. So he gets off.
So he's, you know, fish out of water here, and he sees a guy,
you know, holding his
Argyle, who I love. Argyle's the best. Really good character.
I think in the Blues Brothers,
he is the guy who is trying to steal the guitar off the wall at
Ray's Music Exchange, where Ray Charles fires at him with the gun with two shots
there. So Argyle basically is like, this is
my first time driving a limo, and John McClane is like, this is my first
time riding in one. And he has this big stuffed bear that he's meant to
kind of a Cameron Poe style delivery of a stuffed bear. Stuffed animal to
his child. Well, no, but wait, is it for his wife? Because he's got
two kids and just one bear. So is the bear for Lucy
and John Jr. gets nothing, or is the bear for Holly? Like, that's what I've
always wondered. 'Cause he's only got one big bear. True.
But we're two dads and we're only doing one movie and everybody gets everything.
Oh, yeah. That's a really good point. Unless it's like a Trojan
horse type thing. It's a two-person bear costume that they could put on.
But because John McClane is an everyman, he's sitting in the front seat of the
limo. Which I love to see. So him and Argyle sitting up there in the
front, chopping it up, the bears in the back. And Argyle's playing Run
DMC's Christmas in Hollis, which is just so
good. Great song. I mean, really, really good. And at the time, it was very
new for this movie and unexpected to have even rap
in a mainstream movie, period. It wasn't like a black heavy
cast, right? Yeah, let alone the Christmas. Well, John makes a comment, Clayne makes
a comment, like, does she have any Christmas music? And Argyle's like, this is Christmas
music, man. And sure enough, great scene of them rolling. Rolling in there.
Yeah. So. So John's dropped off now in
the lobby of Nakatomi Plaza. Yeah. And Argel says, like, hey, look, if you strike
out with your wife, because he said, like, where are you gonna stay? If it
doesn't work out with her? He's like, I don't figure it out. He's like,
well, if you strike out, like, give me a call. He hands him his card.
Give me a call. You know, if you score, let me know. I'll go home.
If you strike out, let me know, and I'll. I'll find you a hotel or
something. I'll help you find a place. Yeah. And good, very, like,
astute observations by Argel as John's telling him the situation.
He's like, oh, okay. So she moved out here. Or you don't want to move
out here. Because you thought she wouldn't be successful out here. He's just
on the money there. So he's this young, like 19 year old kid, but he's
really very fast. He really. Says a couple times.
You're very fast, Argyle. Yeah. When John ends up in the lobby of
Nakatomi Plaza, it's weird because there's one of those security guy desks.
There's a Christmas tree in the lobby that's turned off. Right. And I, again,
the time of day. Is, it's like Sunset. Cloudy to me.
Right. So it's probably like
early. But it's weird. So he goes up to the security guy and he asks
for Holly and. He, you know, tries to search her. Holly McLean
tries to search her in the computer. Oh, no, she must be using her maiden
name. It tried to search her, but then the security guy's like, okay, just go
down the elevator. They're on the 30th floor. They're the only ones here. It's like,
just tell them to go. What are we doing here? You get
paid by the word? Like, just let me roll through. Yeah, so he goes
up to the party on the 30th. It's a rollicking bash. Lots of people,
yeah, lots of people, lots of drinks flowing. He gets handed a
drink by a waiter, like, you know, it was already in a cup and it
looks really bright pink. He takes a sip, doesn't like it, gives it back to
another waiter. It was probably some fruity, you know, really sweet kind of thing,
whatever. It's not whiskey neat, so it's not something John McClane would drink, you know,
that kind of thing. And he meets Takagi, Joe Takagi, who is sort of the,
well, he's Holly's boss. It seems like he's the head honcho for like this office
of Nakatomi, like for whatever, like this branch of the Nakatomi Corporation.
Joe Takagi is the head guy. And so he, you know,
thanks Takagi for the, for the limo and stuff. And he's like, oh, I'll take
you to Holly's office. You know, she'll be right back or whatever. She went to
finish up some work. So they walk into Holly's office and Ellis is in there
snorting Coke off the, off the desk. And I love Takagi's thing.
Ellis, what are you doing? This is Holly's husband, John McClane.
Holly's policeman husband. Yeah. When Ellis
gets up, he's like, oh, I just had to make a phone call. This was
the
So fun. The Ellis character is just one of
the best representations of that guy. One of the most fun to
hate, like 80s douchebags in all movies ever. Like really
just perfect encapsulation of the me generation, the yuppie,
everything. And he is just, yeah, he's a slime ball in every way. And he
is one of the only non bad guys who gets capped that
I don't care about. When he I'm like, Good fucking Alice.
No, he's, he's not going to cause. More damage if you stayed alive. Because you
know that he's going to like, he's going to run over some old lady
with his Ferrari or something. Like he's causing problems outside.
That guy drives a beamer for sure, right? And calls it that. It's my beamer.
It's funny at the beginning. So, so John and Holly are talking and she's
like, well, what are you doing tonight? He's like, oh, I'm staying with my friend
in Ramona. And she's like, Ah, you dumb bitch, it's Pomona. It's like,
All right, that joke doesn't work that well if you don't know LA. Like,
that's a normal thing to. I don't think. I think she did correct him,
but I think she was laughing at how far Pomona is from, you know,
whatever. But she did mention that it was far. You'd be in the car
the whole time. But anyway, then this is something I'm noticing in the first time
watching this, is that Holly's just like, why don't you stay with us? The kids
would like it, and I would, too. It's like, are we conceding that this early
in the film, when it's kind of supposed to be about him rekindling eventually with
her,
work for a lot. He was applying that, fair enough. I think the reason,
though, that we have to have this here is that we need John a
to not tell Argyle to leave. Because if everything's going well or everything's going poorly,
he's supposed to call and tell Argyle to get on. Go ahead and go home.
Like, I'm good. Right. So we want him not. We want that to not happen.
So when he does talk to Argyle in a little bit, it's more just like,
I don't know for sure yet,
right?
Okay, there's that. But we also need there to be. This, like, element of John
going like, oh, okay, maybe she's not totally so pissed at me that this isn't
going to work out. Like, he needs to operate through this movie like his
wife and him are going to be back together. Well, he starts a fight with
her immediately, so it throws her, like, her welcomeness out the window because
he immediately it up. Yeah, he does. The whole thing could have ended if he
was like, hey, why don't we ditch this party and go take the kids out
for.
For a,
Hawaiian. Shaved ice. Could have. Yeah, could have. Yeah, because he makes a big deal
about using Gennaro instead of McLean. Except when signing checks or something, which I'm like,
what the fuck is that about? You're a cop. She is like the director of
global development for Nakatomi Corporation. Which one of you makes more money? What is
this? He acts like it's her, you know, his money. She signs checks. McLean.
I know. It's like, what the fuck? It is. Yeah, it is really funny.
And this is like what they depict cops as, like, having the shittiest lifestyle,
like not
get. That's true. So yeah, if he was just fine with her using her maiden
name, he'd be home with the kids right now. Yeah, right. Nothing happens. So now
we get kind of the truck that's holding the bad guys. The arrival.
Pulling up. We don't really see them until they start walking into the
building. Yeah, yeah. And there's like a taller dude and then the short Theo,
the shorter dude, the black dude with the glasses, who I love this character.
And the big guy is Carl, who's basically the main bad guy's right hand man.
Okay. Carl and Theo, and they're walking in there. And the
way Theo, he's not approaching the guard, he's just like describing this basketball
game to Carl. He's like, and Worthy passes it to Kareem and right here.
And then Carl shoots the security guard at the front desk. Yep. And Theo's
like, two points. And then he like hops over the desk and does like
a double foot kick to like kick the guy away. It's a corpse now.
It's like so disrespectful. That character is really, really fun.
Theo is probably the most fun character. I would like a Theo spin. Yes,
I would watch a movie of how did Theo get into this group?
Because he's not German. He's one of two characters, three characters that don't appear to
be like European. Right. There's maybe three bad guys that are like Americans,
or there's Al Liang, who's just always there. I got Al Liang written
down here, baby. So it's like, yeah, how did he join up with this group?
It would be interesting to find out, because that character is super interesting. He's a
computer hacker. He's like all kinds of cool technology stuff. And he's very funny.
And so, yeah, we get a lot of good Theo stuff throughout the
movie. But, yeah. So right away they arrive, they kill two guards right off the
bat. I started keeping a body count at this point. Oh, nice. So I,
we'll get through that near the end of the movie. I'll see. I may have
miscounted, but I think I got it. They start locking down all the entrances and
exits. So they're locking the front doors. They're locking stuff in the, you know,
turning down the, the gates for the parking garage. So now argile is locked inside
because he took the limo into the parking garage doing all this stuff. And Alan
Rickman's Hans Gruber, you know, one of the best villains of 80s action movies,
gets a bunch of his buddies, a bunch of his crew, and they go up
to the 30th floor. And And they disabled the elevators from all the other
floors and stuff, so they're kind of isolating the 30th. It's like 30th and up.
I think they can use the elevator from the 30th and up, and that's about
it. So, or maybe, yeah, whatever, they kind of control it.
So Gruber and his men arrive on the 30th floor,
and immediately, you know, they kind of come out into the party,
and a woman sees them and screams and starts gunshots, like whatever.
They're like, you know, starting to enforce rule over the room. And that's
when McClane, who's still in the bathroom and now has, this is important, right?
He has taken off his shoes and socks. To try the fists with your toes
thing, recognizes the sound of the gunfire, gets his pistol out, and is looking down
the hall and is, you know, while all this stuff is happening, they're pulling people
out of offices and coming down the hall, and he looks like he's gonna
get caught. But then luckily one group of bad guys goes into the next office
down, or two offices down, and pulls a couple who are clearly having sex,
like off a table. So this topless woman gets pulled out, which draws the attention
of all the other bad guys, and we don't actually see it, but he is
then able to kind of run to the stairwell and get out of the office
he's in before they investigate. There's a couple very brief titty distractions
in this movie, which is funny. You can't have an R-rated movie in the 80s
that doesn't have some topless somewhere. No, you can't have that. For sure. And the
henchmen are doing these other things. They're disabling the electricity
and stuff. And it looks like one of them, there's kind of two very tall
blond dudes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's Carl and the other guy. Tony.
Tony. That's his brother. He has glasses and he's like figuring stuff with the
communication system. And Carl is just obviously like the behemoth who doesn't give
a shit. And he comes in with a chainsaw just going through the conduit to
like destroy all the electrical system. It's all the phone trunk. It's actually the phone
trunk. So because it says PacBell employees only on the outside. What he's doing is
he's taking over all of the phone lines that are important. So all of the
calls going in or out of the building will route through their equipment instead.
But in order to make sure that happens, they then need to cut the trunk
to all the rest of the lines so that nothing can get through. And that's
what Carl's doing with the chainsaw. But Tony is scrambling to get the last hookups
done. Yeah. And they're speaking to other Germans. I don't know exactly what they're saying,
but you know, you can sort of figure out like, dude, give me a second.
Nope, it's time. No, no, give me a second. No, here we go. No,
come on, stop. I gotta. And then he kind of breathes a sigh of relief
as he gets the last alligator clip on, which I'm kind of like, I don't
even. If you were still gonna reroute it, would it matter that it didn't cut
first? I don't know. I'm not gonna get into it. But anyway, there, there is
this interaction between Carl and. Good drama and some good sibling rivalry.
Absolutely. Right. Yeah. So, so yeah,
Hans, now they're basically like, they have
shot the machine guns in the air and he's kind of talking about what they're
looking for. Yeah, he's got this speech about like, because of the Nakatomi Corporation's,
like, you know, decades of greed. He's going on and on, basically saying,
you're all going to witness the Nakatomi Corporation pay for its sins. And he's being
very highfalutin sounding, very mission-driven sounding,
kind of like they have this larger mission they're going for.
And now he's got to find Takagi, because again, we was established earlier, Takagi is
the head guy in the building, at least. And they love it. He runs down
Joseph Takagi, Yoshinobu Takagi, Bald and Kyoto,
1937. He's going through this whole... I love that. He's got where he went to
college, JD, MBA, all this stuff. It's like, Chairman soldiers where they're
picking up kids running through the resume. I love that
device. And then, you know, then Takagi finally steps up and goes, I am Joe
Takagi, and he goes, and Father to Five. And I just love the way that,
like, the last thing he mentions is that this guy's a dad. And it's just
like, kind of, it's all so sinister and wonderful. And Rickman is ludicrously
good in this movie. Just unacceptable. The way that he talks as being
like the character of the kind of, like, gentleman criminal.
He does such a good job at it. And he takes Takagi and
they're going, going to pull him to another area of the office. And they're
on the elevator, and he makes a comment about-- that's a nice suit.
John Phillips, London. I have two myself.
I have two myself. A rumor is our Arafat gets his suits there.
I love that all the dudes that Frank Drobbin
beats up at the beginning of Hack and Gun all have a group text about
where they're getting their clothes from.
From. Exactly. Oh, my God. So. So. And I love this scene because this.
Is something I always enjoy seeing in. A movie, is they take Takagi through this
office, which is just full of models. Yeah. I love models. They're very film
friendly. Yeah. Really like to see that. So, you know, they're taking him there and
they're basically like, all right, we got our computer guy. He's this far in getting
into the Vault. Give him the rest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're basically asking for code.
And Takagi's still a little confused. He's like, if I give you codes
You're not going to be able to blackmail our executives. You're not able to do
this. And this is when Gruber is like,
I understand, but we need the code to get into, I'm not interested
in your corporate secrets. I'm interested in the $640 million in
negotiable bearer bonds that you have in your vault. And I need the code to
get into the vault. And Takagi's like, what kind of terrorist are you? And he's
like, who said we're terrorists? We want the money.
And so then Takagi still refuses. He claims he
doesn't have the code, but it's a weird I can't tell. I can't tell if
he does or not. So he says, Gruber does, I'll count to three, he's got
the pistol. And Takagi's like, I don't have the code, you'll simply have to kill
me. And he goes, okay, and shoots him. Now, before this actually happens,
John McClane has arrived on that same floor and is sort of hiding under a
desk in the next room, kind of seeing this all happen. I don't think we
get the sense that he can hear them, because they're in the next room with
a closed door, but he sees them shoot Takagi.
And at that point, he bangs his head
on the desk he's hiding under, which attracts everybody's attention momentarily. McClane's able to get
away, but it does sort of like, Carl and Theo and Gruber,
they're all kind of looking around like something happened. Nobody's here. So they
put it aside, but it sort of does trick. I think it trips that sort
of like something different. We're not necessarily fully have
everything under lock. Because Gruber does seem like the guy who wants to cover every
possible scenario. Totally. And he
shows us throughout the film, he's very prepared. So as Takagi
is where he's telling us, telling them, like, I'm not gonna give them the code.
Yeah, yeah. You're just gonna have to kill me. Theo and Carl appear to have
a side bet with each other of if Takagi is going to give the code
if he's going to get killed or not. So after he gets shot, Carl gives
Theo $5 there. So it's kind of a Duke plays. Yeah. Duke.
Brother style bet. I also love that, like, like Gruber.
Hans does mention quite specifically, like, look, this is $640 million we're gonna
steal. That's, I think he He
says it's less than 10 days operating capital for your company. His motives that are
stated are not necessarily true is kind of like the main point of this is
that if he's saying, We want to bring your company down, we're going to do
this. And of course, Takagi thinks, well, you're going to do that by
stealing our IP or whatever, but that's not
actually what he's doing. So yeah, he's a bit all over the place here.
Yeah,
yeah, exactly. Let's see here. So, McClane has managed to get himself to the 32nd
floor. Right. And pull a fire alarm. Oh, is that at this point? Oh,
yeah, yeah, yeah. Right after that. We should mention before that happens, we see,
McClane doesn't, but we see Hans buddies, bad guys, setting up
the C4 up on the roof. They start placing the C4 and putting detonators and
things. So they are arming the roof with bomb, basically with big
fire alarm. Now, because the bad guys have taken over the phone system or whatever,
then they're able to call from their own phones as
if they're calling from the plaza, basically, and, and sort of explain
what happened to the 911 and be like, I was a false alarm. Don't send
anybody. So they do end up turning, turning around. Yeah. And McLean
sitting. There's a great scene of him watching them through the window, and he sees
this, like, whole army of fire trucks approaching, and then they're turning around as He's
like, what are you doing? What the fuck are you doing? And he's being kind
of loud, but in the meantime, they know what floor the fire alarm was tripped
from. And they send up Tony, right? Who has,
my wife pointed this out, he has a very Jeffrey Dahmer look.
Yes, he's like a German, he's like a Jeffrey Daimler. He's like a
German-looking, like Norwegian Dahmer-type
guy. So he comes up and he's going straight after McClane.
He's got his machine gun. He's like, I'm not going to hurt you,
whatever. And he's like, he turns around and fires at him. So they end
up- I love that. He slaps the safety off the MP5 he's
carrying while saying, I'm not going to hurt you.
Yeah, so he's clearly intended to hurt him. And they have a great tussle.
And basically, McLean gets him in a position and he's
like, basically, I'm going to shoot you. And I love this line where he's like,
you're a policeman. There are rules for police.
I love that. Confidence of that.
That. And the McLean's response. Yeah, my captain keeps telling me that. But they fight
and they wrestle and they tumble, and then they end up falling down the stairs,
and Tony's neck is broken. And so now,
you know, McLean's able to get his walkie-talkie he
is able to get his machine gun, his MP5, and, like, some ammo,
and then this, like, bag that he doesn't even really know what's in it.
He's just got the bag with him, but it's got, like, detonators and stuff.
Maybe he did notice, but anyway, he goes to try on Tony's
in the world, I gotta kill one with feet smaller than my sister. It's a
great line. But he puts a Santa hat on Tony, puts him in the elevator,
writes on his sweatshirt, Now I have a machine gun, ho ho ho. And sends
him back to the 30th, down to the 30th floor. And he's doing
some impressive move, like jimmying the elevator with a mop handle,
like the way he's able to stop it at the point where he can get
out, but he can still reach the button to send it down. Sitting on top
of it, is that why? Yeah, I thought to myself, why wouldn't he just just,
put him on top of the elevator car. So. Okay, yeah, he's got to do
this whole thing, but it works. Now I have a machine gun. Ho, ho,
ho. It's so good. And, you know, this being Tony, the brother
of Carl, who's, like, the most, like, the number two guy to Hans Gruber.
Yeah, he's lost. I mean, obviously.
And Holly is kind of noticing, like, that there's some chaos
among the. Among the
terrorists. Yeah. And at one point when, I think maybe before, oh, as they're getting
the elevator to come down, Gruber has,
Hans addresses the assembled Nakatomi employees.
He has a great line where he says, like, you know, I'd hoped this to
be, like, cordial, but Mr. Takagi did not agree. And unfortunately,
he won't be joining us for the rest of his life.
So good. And then people, like, scream, whatever. But, yeah, but, yeah,
Holly kind of makes a comment in earshot of Ellis that, like, oh, that's,
like, John. I think it says something like only John makes people that angry or-
oh, that's later. She says that a little later, yeah. But she has that look
for sure, 'cause I was thinking the line was coming there, because the way she
looked, it was like, oh, this is the guy who knows how to make people
that fucking angry. Exactly. And John has gotten ahold of the radio from Tony.
So he has something, and he's trying to like radio for help. And I think
he's trying to call the 911 emergency dispatch. Yeah, he got up on the roof,
and channel nine on a CB basically is like, kind of like 911
for telephone. And so he's up on the roof to try to increase the broadcast
distance. And it's trying to call out to just anybody who will listen, like,
hey, there's this emergency, Nakatomi Plaza, this, whatever. But especially because the fire alarm
was already pulled and was turned out to be a prank or a mistake or
whatever, the operators, the dispatchers are very unconcerned,
whether they think he's just screwing around, like, sir, this is for emergencies only.
And he's like, what do you think I'm ordering a pizza? You know, like,
they're being so dismissed. But in the meantime, because Gruber can hear them on
the radio and he thinks to himself, where would you go if you're trying to
transmit? He must be on the roof. He sends Carl and
a couple other rise up. And I want to pause for a. Second and point
out that, like, this. Movie is so much like a video game in that the
rank and file bad guys all carry MP5s, which ended up becoming,
like, the standard bad guy machine gun in 90s movies. Really wasn't
super common. If you look at movies pre-Die Hard, the MP5 is not a standard
issue bad guy weapon. Yeah, it is in, like, everything for,
like, the next 10 years, at least, is just an interesting thing. And then
Gruber, the head boss, he only has a pistol. He's that little,
like, German. Right. But the right hand. Man, the enforcer guy,
Carl, has what's called a Sturmgauz, and it's this German,
crazy looking, futuristic, psychotic,
big rifle thing. It's Austrian, I think, technically, but like, it just
looks amazing. He has to like attach the barrel to it. It just, it looks
so like big bad guy, you know, end boss kind
of thing. And sure enough, when he starts firing that thing at John on the
roof, man, it is, it's a huge noise, you know, the muzzle blast
is enormous, like everything is like wild. Now, luckily for McClane, right? He's on the
walkie-talkie with 911 or the equivalent, and the gunfire
starts while he's still on. So they hear it and they're like, what is that?
Kind of thing. We got to send someone. But now he's,
you know, he's got to get the fuck away from these guys. He's going to
get his ass killed up on the roof. Oh my God.
Yeah. So now we have a, you know,
we're being shown Reginald Vel Johnson.
Sergeant Al Powell.
Al Powell,
Carl Winslow. And he's in like a 7-Eleven, you know, buying some snacks or whatever.
And he gets the call while he's in there and there's some good banter between
him and the clerk there. And the guy's kind of like, oh, you're gonna eat,
you know, all this. I thought you guys like donuts 'cause he's buying Twinkies.
They're for my wife. And then he does like the most passive-aggressive
putting change into the little charity bucket at the register.
So he gets the call. Oh, I will say.
Gas. Oh, 74 cents. Holy crap. In downtown LA. Yeah. Good God. Wow. So there's,
like, a shootout happening on the roof, and basically he's going. He doesn't know
this stuff is happening. So Al just takes his car over to go.
Go take a look at nakatomi. Well, doesn't he see muzzle flashes from. The nice,
not yet? Or he might see that something's off because, you know, he gets there
and then he leaves. Yeah, that's true. So it doesn't concern him quite enough,
but he's just like, okay, I'll go check it out.
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so he, let's see. Oh, so, so Carl now and McLean.
Are having this great shoot. One of the other henchmen kind of looks like Steve
Perry from Journey. He's like a big version of Steve Perry. Marco, I think.
And there's some good stuff there.
At one point, McLean is like falling into the elevator
shaft and he's hanging by like the strap of the machine gun,
which is great tension of like showing the
strap It unravels and it's. Like it would have fallen immediately, but. I love the
way that shot, you know. But is that even an elevator shaft? 'Cause I wrote
this, I'm like, I mean, they call it an elevator shaft, but I guess I
think it's next elevator shaft. I think he's in the ducting. I think that's part
of the heating system. Okay. Somehow. Yeah, that's an enormous thing. 'Cause there's no wires
or, you know, there's no infrastructure in there for an elevator. I think they had
to walk past an elevator to get there. Okay. But it's like, that's why there's
all these ducts. Just a generalized shaft. Which is like still weird as hell that
there would be that big, 'cause if that's pushing hot air through the building,
It's huge, I don't know. But anyway, I think that's what it's supposed to be.
The way he falls, trying to reach the
other duct, misses the initial grab,
clearly falls away from the wall a bit towards the center
of the ship, and then is able to fingertip catch himself, is maybe
the most unbelievable thing in the whole movie. It might be the most unbelievable thing.
It's awesome, but it is so crazy. So he's
able to grab pull himself. He's lost his machine gun now, but. He'S able to
pull himself up into. This air duct, you know, this heating duct. And he,
for whatever reason, decides right away to, like, use his, the Zippo lighter he took
from Tony to, like, check his surroundings, which I'll give you a hint, pal,
you're in a duct. Like, not much to see. But that Clues Carl in.
Then he's looking down from where John sort of came in initially into the shaft
and can see. He actually sees the light go out as he Clips closed the
Zippo, and. Now he
knows kind of where he is again. It's like, John, you're giving away your location.
Oh, man. And crawling in the duct, it just seems like it. Can you imagine
being in that? There's no way it would hold me. I feel like I would
fall the second I walked on it. It's not built for, like, 200 pounds
going through it. Exactly. But, yeah, just iconic scene of
McLean crawling through the Ducks with the lighter. I mean, one of the. The best
shots of the movie. McLean, he ends
up. Getting. And they're, like, on top of them, but they can't quite spot them,
so. They don't catch them in the Ducks. Right. Well, and that's when the police
arrive and Carl and other boys get called off. They have to rush back to,
to, like, basically now they got. They wanted the police to arrive. It's part of
their plan, but it's like they need to deal with it now, kind of.
Yeah. And they see, you know, mlan sees
the cop car. He's now in the room where Takagi was killed. Room with all
the models and stuff. There's the blood splatter on the door. It's pretty gnarly.
And he looks down and he sees the cop car there. So he's kind kind
of like, you know, hey, it's about time. And at the same time, Al now
has come into the lobby and he's talking to the guard who's the fake,
the replacement guard that's part of Gruber's crew.
So again, at this point, the time kind of confusing me. So I
think we're probably at what, six, seven? Yeah,
it's dark out now. Yeah, right. So it's actually sun has set. Yeah. So.
So when Al comes in and, and Eddie, the security guard
there, and he's like watching the football game, he's like, God damn, I got 50
bucks bet on them. And it's a Notre Dame USC It.
Would be a Christmas Eve Bowl game probably. Yeah. Did they do Christmas? I guess
they do do Christmas Eve Bowl game. Usually not schools that big.
Yeah. Schools that big would be playing like New Year's Day. In fact, it's incredibly
possible. Actually, USC Notre Dame. Notre Dame wasn't in the Big Ten. Still isn't.
But USC could have won the Pac-10 that year easily. And I don't
know, normally you'd have the big schools from the Midwest and the West Coast playing
on the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day. That was the standard, right? But yeah,
apparently there's a USC Notre Dame rivalry game. Christmas Eve game. Those teams always did
play each other. Back then they would always Schedule each other's rivals, but usually earlier
in the season, you think, because this is like division two playoff slash,
you know, crappy bowl game time. Yeah. This isn't where, I don't know
what the timeline was, but I was always like, and imagine you're at Notre Dame,
you gotta, you gotta play football on Christmas Eve. I mean,
so, so McClain is, he's like looking out the window, kind of like, you know,
what's this cop doing? And at the same time,
the guy.
smashed a window to like try to whatever he's trying to get into. And a
lookout basically from a higher floor was able to see that that happened and go,
Somebody's two floors down, go. And so Heinrich, who was the guy originally
setting all the bombs, and one of the other guys, I don't remember which one,
both come in to the floor that
McLean's on. Now the first guy shows up and McLean's yelling, I'm like, Drop the
gun, drop the gun. He's like, okay, okay, I'll drop, I'll drop. And that's when
Heinrich comes behind him to shoot.
But McClane catches him right between the eyes with one, and that guy's down.
And now we got the scene where, much like in the Crow, although thankfully,
you know, everybody survived this filming, above a table and getting
shot up through it, like, you know, McClane ends up shooting the guy
through the table. And because he says something like, Next time you have a chance
to kill someone, don't wait. And as he's chasing, he's like,
Where are you going, pal? There's no more table.
So. So McClane kills those two, and then Powell is like, this is dumb.
There's nothing wrong here. He's down in the lobby. Still doesn't know anything that's happening
30 floors above him or whatever. So he's like, this is stupid. I'm gonna go.
He goes to leave, and that's when McClane goes ahead and throws that guy's
body through the hole he made in the window. Yeah. It lands right on Powell's
car, which then causes him to speed backwards. And at which point, also, all the
other people, like, doing Lookout on this, realize, he knows something's wrong. Now let's kill
him. Yeah. They're now firing at him as well, so his car. Car is getting
shot up and he's calling in, I need backup. They're turning my car into Swiss
cheese. Like, he's just going off until he finally kind of backs far enough away
that he falls down an embankment and is no longer within range, I guess,
right, of these machine guns. Yeah, and he's-- I
like the body being dropped accurately. We saw that in Con Air as well.
We love a body drop here. And then Al is backing
away and he's driving like mother in sneakers when he has to drive the
van there. And he's just speeding away in the stupidest way. I mean, you're getting
shot at, whatever. He's not paying a whole lot of attention. So yeah,
that's great. And now, okay, it's official. The cops
are aware that there's some shit going down in the Plaza. And this is when
one of McClane's great lines in the movie, when he looks out the broken window
and goes, Welcome to the party, pal. Yes, it's a classic. Oh, and Al is
singing, he's singing Let It Snow to him. So that's kind of
funny. Let it snow as the body comes and crashes. Be white body.
It's a white guy too. It's raining white guys.
So now the cops arrive for real. Yes. And we cut very briefly to William
Atherton, the actor playing the character Thornberg. Atherton's probably
up there for ranking on the actor who played the most stupid assholes everybody
hates in 80s and 90s movies, 'cause he was also Peck in
Ghostbusters, and he was the like asshole scientist
in biodome and all kinds of stuff. Yes, yes. So there's
that. The news reporter. The news reporter, yeah, so he hears over the police band
radio, radio,
the, you know, shooting in Nakatoma Plaza, you know, police officer needs assistance, all this
stuff. And he goes, whoa, we gotta check this out. So he goes to try
and, like, get a van, get approval from his producer, like, get a van to
go down there. And the guy's, like, getting the evening news started, right? We're probably
as close to, like, seven or seven o'clock news or something like that. And so
there's this little banter back and forth. And I love it that he kind of
distracts the male news anchor enough that the guy's, like, grimacing at him. I love
that scene. Harvey, you're on TV, you know, and he's like, hello, welcome,
whatever. And I love a little, another, like, who, what else were they in?
Gail, the, the anchor woman sitting next to her is This is
the Goonies, Mrs. Walsh from the Goonies. Shit, she looked familiar. Okay, thank you for
that. Who's the mom and the Goonies? Where's this lady from? And no, I'm not
gonna look it up.
Yeah, the News Guy subplot is very fun, especially with
it taking place in LA. It's a very LA thing of fighting for
the story and all this kind of stuff, and being unethical
on your way to try to get the scoop. McLean is on
the radio. He's basically on the radio with Hans. And he had
found the C4, some detonators and stuff.
And Hans is basically ridiculing,
like, oh, you Americans, you're all playing cowboys and Indians. You think you're a cowboy?
He's like, Do you have a chance, Mr. Cowboy? And this is where McLean says,
Yippee ki yay, motherfucker. Yeah, 'cause he says, like, we're like John Wayne or whatever.
He says somebody else. And he goes, I've always liked Roy Rogers myself. Yeah.
Do you really think you have a chance against us, Mr.
Cowboy?
So really good. And McClane now has been in contact with Al. So he's gotten
a hold of Al. He knows that Al's the cop down there. And he's given
him some info, not a bunch about himself, but he's giving him, you know,
like, this is what I know. And he's written the name. I noticed you have
that too, Steve. You have all the terrorist names written on your wrist like John
McClane. That's why you're so good with the names here. But yeah, so I always
love that where you're like, just like in Toy Soldiers where we're gathering some intel
and ready to dump it to the outside. Because then he names them all by
name. He's like, like, oh, like Fritz and Carl and whatever, we'll have time,
good time with Marco and, you know, sorry about your buddy Heinrich and Tony,
but all of a sudden he's naming everybody. And that's freaking out some of the,
not Hans so much, but some of his guys, like, why do they know so
much? What's going on, you know? Yeah. And at that point, Carl confirms that,
hey, he's not lying. Heinrich's dead and the detonators are missing. And that's a huge
problem for Hans. Like, regardless of all this other stuff, he doesn't care that the
cops are coming. He doesn't care that there's, I mean, he cares, but that there's
another guy that he can deal with a lot of this. And some of it
he needed to happen. He talks, he needs the cops, he needs the FBI to
show up, but he needs the detonators. If he can't, you know,
set the, the, the roof to blow when he wants to, it up his plans.
He needs that back. So that becomes the new sort of, like, driving force for
Hans. It's like, we need to get this guy because he's got the detonators.
And so, yeah, Powell is chatting with McLean for a while, calling him Roy,
because he's, like, trying not to give his real name away over the radio.
He mentions it's a party line, you know, neighbors are listening. Yeah, neighbors got 80
trigger fingers or whatever, but they're chatting back and.
A little bit, at which point more cops show up down where Powell is,
including Deputy Chief Dwayne T. Robinson, played by everybody's favorite asshole from the 80s,
maybe more than Bill Atherton, Paul Gleason, who we recently saw in Trading
Places as Clarence Beeks, but also maybe more famously was Principal Vernon in the Breakfast
Club. And he is excellent. He's like so good at just being upset
and being undeservedly in charge.
He's just really, really good at that. Yeah. So, so now we're kind of back
with the hostages. And, and of course, Dwayne Robinson, he's like, Al, why are you
talking to this guy? He probably is one of the terrorists. Like, he does not
buy a single thing that McClain has told him. That's right. He probably, he's probably
yanking your chain. Yeah. And, and then some of the leaps that he makes later
where he's doing the, well, it's probably just this. Yeah. Yeah. Dude. Right side.
What are we, maybe you're a terrorist. This is terrible police work because Powell.
Says something about, like, I think he might be a cop, maybe not La,
but I think he's a badge. Like, why do you think that? Well, Stuff he
said about like being able to spot a fake ID. And he goes, Jesus Christ,
Powell, he might be a bartender. Like, bro, really?
So Holly basically
approaches Hans because it kind of Takagi's gone. She's like,
well, I didn't want to talk to you, but you killed the boss, and now
people are looking at me. Like, I'm the person in charge here. Idiot put you
in charge. You did when you killed my boss. And just doing, you know,
very, very basic, like,
Hey, Hey, I'm not trying. To tell you to let us go, but we need
to go to the bathroom. We need some comfort for this pregnant woman and negotiate.
And he's being reasonable with her. He has some level of respect for her,
I think. Well, again, the hostages, he needs them alive because
he really needs them to not be alive later. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He needs to
keep them all good now. We need to keep them alive and not alive
later on. So, and Robinson not listening
to any of this stuff is like, We're sending the SWAT team in. I wouldn't
have this shiny new SWAT team if I wasn't going to use it. Let's go.
One of the best things when they start attacking, when they start their assault on
the building and they're running up, one of the cops runs through rose bushes and
just goes, Ow! He gets stuck by the thorn. I wrote that down. That is
so funny. There was some other instance of a really
minor thing bothering the cops, too, which was good. But that made me laugh
so hard. It made me think of Toy Soldiers, where they assault the school and
one of them comes out of the helicopter and just falls on his ass and.
Then keeps running or whatever.
Oh my God. So, and as Hans's crew is preparing. This assault, 'cause they see
'em all coming. One of our favorites, Al Liang, the Asian dude with the
great balding mullet and the mustache and stuff.
He's at the concession, the little store area,
and he's got his eye on the candy bar and sheepishly
starts ganking candy bars. 'Cause it shows him eating a different candy bar every
time. He's chewing on something, yeah, and it's just like, man,
the best possible place to stake out. Oh, I would love that.
Is like, by the candy? Heck yeah, man. Let's get a little sugar rush going
before we start taking out these cops. Imagine if you're by the batteries or the
rope or, you know, something that's not like candy. You got something to
do there. And I love too, like, so they go, they get all set up,
they send some cops here and they're like positioned or whatever. And then the sort
of captain, the sort of second in command on scene, who by the way was
in Brewster's Millions as one of the journalists at the political rally.
I mentioned that in that episode too. He's the get the car guy. But he
goes, he goes to turns to Robinson, he goes, We're ready. And Gleeson, he looks,
he goes, Kick ass. It's just so bullshit bravado.
And they have this crazy armored assault vehicle. Yes, the car.
Which is this six-wheeled beast of a thing. It kinda looks
like a tank without a turret. Yeah, that's kinda what it looks like. Yeah,
yeah. It's one of these things that for a movie like this, I'm like,
oh, cool. And then I find out my local PD bought one at the expense
of field trips for all the kids in
LA. And it's not as cool, but cool in this movie. And as it's going
up there, I. Mean, they just absolutely take this thing out with a fucking rocket
launcher. Yeah, I love Theo over the line over the walkie-talkies.
Like, the police have themselves an RV.
And yeah, they've got this huge floor-mounted rocket
launcher thing. Shooting a rocket launcher, missile launcher,
whatever, out of an office building did make me think of Terminator 2 as well,
for sure, when they're at Cyberdyne. But this is like an even even
bigger rocket launcher thing. It's like they have to, like, bolt it into the ground
so it doesn't so the kickback doesn't, like, make it fly out of your hands.
Yeah. And they shoot and they actually shoot it twice, this this car thing.
So I don't know if we're supposed to believe anybody in there or did they
die? How many people were in it? Did they get out? Like, I can't remember
whatever. I did them kind of like, like writhing outside. Those were the guys that
were trying to break into the front door and got shot by Ali Young and
the other guys in the lobby was those guys. They just took it in the
knee or in the arm. And they were instructed by Gruber to not kill them.
He's pulling a little bit of an Ed Harris in the Rock where he's like,
I don't want this to go too sideways. He's not as righteous
as in his cause or whatever, but he doesn't want fucking chaos.
He knows that's gonna throw the whole thing off. He can't escalate too quickly.
Theo is still trying to get through the different locks of this.
There's seven locks of this safe. We kind of didn't mention this part where he's
able to get through, he says, I can get through up to six of them,
but the last one, like the circuits can't be cut locally. It's electromagnetic. There's no
way to get around it. You need a miracle for that. I can get you
there. Okay. But you gotta take it from there. And Hans is basically like,
Don't worry, Theo. It's Christmas. It's the season of miracles,
you know, whatever. But Hans can't have there be
too much escalation and have the cops too coming in or whatever and screw everything
up until Theo gets through the right locks. There's a timing to all of that.
Slow play it a Slow play little. it a little. Oh, and one other quick
Theo thing. When they shoot that vehicle, which I would have loved like
a toy of that vehicle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When they blow it up with
the rocket launcher, Theo goes, oh my God, the quarterback is
toast. Which is like, I enjoy it 'cause I like this movie,
but it's like some note was given that they're like, oh,
Theo should say sports stuff. How often can we have the black gentleman talk
about sports? Can we fit in a few more? It's like, Jesus, guys, really?
But I do like his enthusiasm and his dismissal
of human life. So at this point, McLean has
like this, he has some of the C4s. He has Heinrich's bag.
Heinrich still had not placed all of the C4 bricks up
on the roof, just most of them. So there was like one or
two, I think, bricks of C4 left, along with some of the detonating, you know,
coils or whatever they, how they are. And so he, like, you know, sets all
that up, puts it on an office chair with a monitor on top of it
just so he could, like, keep it in place. Right. And he goes, he wants,
he's going to throw this down the, down the elevator shaft. Yeah.
Now, I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure even unplugged, a cathode ray
tube monitor or television, a CRT like that, those old Stool monitors, they can shock
you. Like, if you were to open up the back of one of those,
you can get an incredible electrical shock, even when it's not plugged in. So the
idea that that Cracking, breaking and being on top of this C4 would
ignite it actually makes a ton of sense, which is really interesting. So he shoves
it down the elevator shaft and says, Geronimo motherfucker.
I like, yeah. Yeah. We gotta have alternate catchphrases
here for certain parts. So how, like his accuracy
of that bomb blowing up at the correct floor, that was
weird. When he threw it down, was kind of crazy because he didn't have any
kind of remote thing to detonate it.
It was just like whenever it hit, should have happened. It landed and then that,
right? And so maybe they were talking about some of the elevators or express elevators.
Maybe not all the elevator shafts went all the way to the lobby. I don't
know. But it did seem like maybe the third floor from the ground is where
it really blows up. So somehow that's where it stopped. Maybe that's where
the elevator was in that shaft. So it's hitting the top of the elevator.
That makes sense. The elevator car and blowing up, something like that.
But cool explosion. Absolutely.
It? See Huge
explosion. Great, great. Enormous. So on the news now, they've kind. Of learned they know
about Hans Gruber. They have some names and stuff and they're showing some information.
And there's a scene where the news person has a picture of Hans
Gruber and he's standing next to this big coffee urn that looks
just like R2-D2. I don't understand. He's like next to this gigantic
coffee thing where I was like, is that fucking R2-D2? I missed that.
But it's cool that the news is catching up so fast. Like the author of
Hostage Terrorist, Terrorist Hostage is like down at the station on Christmas
Eve. His family's like, wait, you said that was the last book and then we
get to have holidays together. And then during
this whole time, Argyle is still in the garage having the
time of his life. He's waiting for McLean to call him. So in his mind,
dude, I'm gonna watch some TV, enjoy some CD, enjoy some VCR,
all this stuff that I. Have in my- CD,
CB. And chilling with the bear and having the time of his life with sunglasses.
Pouring some drinks.
I love that. So at this point, I think this. Is when Ellis decides that
he's gonna try to, you know, work his magic, right? He's an international businessman.
He cuts deals. He's doing it, so he does a little coke off his finger,
off his knuckles, tries to tighten his tie, does a terrible job of it.
If you're a hostage, is there a worse scenario to
do coke in than I am a hostage? As a non-cokE doer, I'm not sure.
It's not- yeah, not either, but I. Can imagine it being- if you're addicted to
cocaine, maybe it's exactly when you need it. Like it seems like Ellis is doing
a lot of coke at work on Christmas. If you're doing a lot of Coke
at work on Christmas Eve, you probably do a lot of Coke, period. That's right.
You have a lot of boundaries. This is not like taking half a gummy before
visiting your family at the holidays. Yeah, he's not taking the edge off. His life
is the edge. Exactly. So he does this more Coke and is like,
I'm gonna talk to these guys, whatever, and he makes a comment. He walks in
and is talking to Hans about like, Hans, I can give you this, I can
do that. And I love the line where he's like, I've seen 60 minutes.
I know into you're this or whatever. I don't care if you need, I don't
care if it's, and he says racist.
Things about, like, Middle Easterners or, like, I think, like, you know, the Northern Ireland,
like, whatever. He says, like, all this stuff. And then he goes, Hans, booby,
I'm your white knight. And it's that line is so good.
And I love that Hans is, like, confused. He goes, I must have missed that
episode of 60 Minutes. What are you talking about? Like.
Yeah. And again, you know, Ellis, not on it, not on
screen a ton. But you get such a picture of this guy. You could imagine
what his life would be like outside of the 100%, which I think is the
best compliment you could pay to a minor character. Like that guy had the first
infinity pool ever installed on Mulholland. Dude,
1000%. And if Ellis is not an ice
bath guy right now, I will eat my hat.
That dude is tracking his macros, you know what I mean?
So Ellis basically tells Hans that
he's like, oh yeah, John is my guest at the party. He's an old friend
of mine. Which is at least, to Ellis's credit, he didn't blow up his spot
completely. So that is like one redeeming thing. But he did give his name away.
Yeah. That's not great. Bad, bad move. Yeah.
Another great characteristic of that type of like overconfident 80s
cocaine guy is saying capiche. Yeah. And he
drops the capiche. So he's like, Hey, John, come on. Just tell him where the
detonators are here. Oh, and then he'll be on the phone with,
he's on the CB with John. He's like, He's gonna shoot me. And then he
kind of gives a look over to Gruber like, Huh, wait for it. This guy
thinks I'm really in danger. Yeah, yeah. Really funny scene there. And of
course, you know, Gruber's had enough of this fucking guy.
He's not gonna help him or do anything. Well, and I love it. He's like
reaching for the gun, and over the walkie, you can hear Ellis go like,
Hans, buddy, come on. What am I, a method actor? This is radio, not TV.
Like, put the gun down. And John's trying to tell him, Ellis, like, tell him
you don't know me, like, whatever. He shoots him, and then immediately, because the gunshots
happen now, the entire crowd out on the 30th floor is screaming and stuff because
they heard a gunshot. And he pulls, Hans pulls the walkie-talkie out,
and like,
Maybe some, someday I will hit somebody that you care about. Like, bring me my
detonators. Like, he's pissed. Yeah, but, but that is all for Ellis. Ellis has waved
bye-bye. So this is, I think, where Hans then decides to actually call the
police. Right. And start making demands. Yes. So, and, and he basically,
he has a good list of demands, which is like, I would like the release
of my revolutionary brothers and sisters, and he's naming a few different movements and,
like. Where They're imprisoned and stuff. And at a certain point, you know. Carl's looking
at him like, what? Yeah, 'cause he says, I'm with the Asian Dawn movement.
And then he says, I heard about them on... I read about them in Time
Magazine. Oh, yeah, I read about them in Time. They do drop a
lot of media references in this film, you know? Oh, it's LA.
Yep. Yeah, so that's happening. And then we're at the news
station, and they're interviewing the author of this book about hostages and terrorists
and stuff. So we have the news angle happening. We have him making his demands.
And then we have John McClane. And then he's told, Hans has now told Carl,
Now it's time for you to hunt him down. Like before he was holding Carl
back, he's like, you could have neutralized him, like whatever, but now he's got the
detonators. Hunt that rat down, go get my detonators, find him wherever
he is. So now Carl is on a mission. He's already super pissed because John
killed his brother Tony, but now he also has sort of carte blanche from the
boss to just tear the place up, find him, kill him, get my detonators back.
Real quick, the author on the news thing talks about the
Helsinki syndrome, which is a funny that makes a joke that Harvey the dumb
anchor goes as in, Helsinki, Sweden. And the guy's like,
Finland. But why didn't they just call it the Stockholm joke? 'Cause that's like the
real thing. It's so weird, 'cause he could have done the joke the other way
around and go, as in Stockholm, Finland, and be like, Sweden. You know, they could
have made the joke, but like, what is the Helsinki joke? No, that is so
strange. That is a funny thing. I caught that a little bit too.
So, oh, so the purpose, I guess, for Gruber to make these specific
demands is that he knew this would get the FBI in trouble. Correct, 'cause he's
asking the State Department to do something. So that's gonna involve federal agents now.
Yeah, right. Yeah. Now we're introduced to two
great characters. Once again, we've got Agent Johnson and Agent Johnson,
the FBI agents, no relation. No relation. And one of them
is played by the great Robert Davi, who we've seen in several
films. And he was all around this area. Jake Fratelli and the Goonies.
Yeah, fantastic. And I have a quick Robert Davi story. And then the other
guy, so it's funny that Robert Davi, white guy, the other Asian is a black
guy. And he was in, I think, Demolition Man. We've seen him a few places.
He was the young version of Zachary LamB in-- He was the helicopter
pilot and the sort of preamble,
the prologue of Demolition Man. In addition, by the way, both that actor's name
is Grand L. Bush is actually his name. He and Robert Davi also both
together in License to Kill, the James Bond movie. Nice. Yeah. Funny little
Grand L. Bush, my favorite Spanish language female porn star
as well. So, okay, really?
Maybe law? Real quick on Robert
Davi.
Please. Killed me. So I know a person who is distantly related to Robert Dahvi,
and Robert Dahvi has kind of a reputation of being, like, kind of a
dick, right? Great actor, like, very talented, whatever. But he's also one
of these, like, he thinks he's in the Rat Pack in real life kind of
guys, which is a very funny character trait to me.
So this guy, because he was a distant cousin, he got married, you know,
20 years ago and was like, oh, so I invited, you know, all these people
in
my family, so. I invited Robert, thinking like, oh, well. He'S a cousin, he'll get
invited. He returned the invitation, basically saying that my appearance fee is $5,000.
For family? Wow. Hold on.
What are you gonna do there? Say goonie stuff? Like,
what's justifying this? Oh, my God. Oh, we want a lot of people who
feel like their skin looks better than it does, so they're gonna stand next to
you. I was Agent Johnson. No, the other one. That will never
stop making me laugh that this guy wanted an appearance fee to
come to a family wedding. So shout out, Robert.
Okay, so now we've got these guys. Hans is frantically
looking for these. Well, he decides Heinrich's dead and Carl's looking for John for the
dentists. Like, basically, Hans, like, I'm gonna go check. Make sure the. How far did
they get? Basically, how far did Heinrich get? How big, how. How covered are we?
So he goes up to check the explosives. They say on the roof, but it
seems like really they're just underneath the roof right inside still. But that's
where McLean. Sort of spots him. And now, you know, Hans, being an incredibly smart
guy, immediately takes on an American accent and is like, oh, no, you're one of
them. Oh, no, don't hurt me. Great. Really smart, great, scared. And, again,
quick on his feet, too. Absolutely. And so, you know,
he plays, basically plays pretend, you know, that, that he's one of the,
I was trying to get away, like, whatever, all this stuff. And so he and,
you know, McClane end up, like, talking a little bit,
and John's like, you know, you gotta come with me. He's trying to go back
for his gun. He's like, no, no, no, you gotta come this way. There's,
if you want it to you got to stay with me, John says. But they
go down to where they're near one of the elevators on one of the levels
because there's like a directory nearby. And so John offers Hans
a cigarette and says, you know, say, so, hi, I'm John McLean. And very,
again, very quickly, we see on the directory there is
a clay comma WM, right? Which means it was short for William. So he says,
clay, Bill Clay, you know? And so he's like, very smart. And he says,
so Bill, you ever use one
of these? He hands him a pistol, his sidearm, and he's like, oh, I went
Yeah, yeah. And he's like, well, this is the real thing. And he actually,
like, pulls the clip out and, like, checks it and puts the clip back in
and hands it to him. And as John starts walking away, Hans gets on
the radio and is saying something in German, right over the radio, and while pointing
the gun at him, and it's like, sure enough, he click, click, and nothing.
And so he's like, what are you doing? Stupid off! Stupid off! He goes,
Oops, no bullets! No bullets! I wanted to
make like a, like a mix, like just a sequence of
no more table, no bullets, no more table,
no bullets. Yeah, I think that could work,
dude. A little bit of a Skrillex, you know, like drop the beat background.
Honestly, like if they successfully pulled this off, I think that song would
play at the after party that the Gruber crew would have.
So yeah, great scene. And I love the Bill Clay thing. I mean, just quick
thinking, really, really smart. So right as basically
McClane has him, like there's no bullets. You're screwed. I got a gun on you.
But the elevator opens and the henchmen. Yes. Carl and two others,
I think it's Carl is there and there's like two other guys. One of them
gets shot right away. And then the end, then everybody starts shooting whatever and everybody's
getting guns. It's now everybody's shooting. Oh, and Gruber had noticed when he was talking
to McClane earlier, he looked down and noticed that he was barefoot. That's right.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so they're shooting at him and he's ducked into like this
computer room. It looks like a little servers and stuff. And they're shooting back at
each other and it's not really there's not much advantage being had.
But now two more of Hans's guys are dead and it's just Hans and Carl,
at which point Hans says in German to Carl, shoot the glass, but he kind
of looks back at him like he can't hear him or whatever. So he says,
and he's like, shoot the glass. And sure enough, they both, with their machine guns,
the Steyr AUG and the MP5, they're just blasting just
the glass windows all around McClane. I mean, it's like,
holy crap. And of course he has to run through it in order
to like
get away. Away and there's nowhere to go but to run through broken glass and
his bare feet, just like Marv in Home Alone, coming through the window. It's a
Christmas tradition running through glass and bare feet.
Yeah. And at this point, I mean, the terrorists are kind of becoming unhinged
and this is where Holly sees them losing their mind.
We should mention real quick before we pass on
when John, had to leave the bag. So Hans is basically, he's got all of
the equipment he needed back. Very important. Yeah, yeah. And they're, but they're still losing
their fucking mind. And Holly observes this and she's like, you know, I know John's
still alive because only John can drive somebody that crazy. Yeah, 'cause Carl's going nuts
and it's like, Carl, like, Hans is happy. Hans has his detonators. He's like,
I'm good. I actually don't care what happens to that guy now, in a sense.
Like, I've got what I need and my plan's gonna work. And Carl's like,
I still want blood. This guy killed my brother. And so he's freaking out.
This is also when Thornberg, Bill Atherton, the journalist,
he has become one of his assistants or somebody that works from comes by and
is like, tell me you got something. All I've got is, you know, McLean's,
you know, like, department in New York, his badge number, his entire employment
history, and his wife's address in here in LA. And they're like, holy.
So they drive off to Holly's home, right, where, of course, she is not,
but Paulina and the kids are. And we cut,
and then I think from that we cut back to John.
Pulling the glass out of his feet in the bathroom. It's just horrific. Terrible,
dude. I've talked about my sort of issue with Achilles tendons and anything happening to
ankles in movies. This is close. Not quite as bad,
but it's adjacent. It is so bad. And so during this time, McLean is kind
of having a conversation with Al. And this is where he's learning a bit about
Al. And he's saying, Hey,
what's wrong with you? You got flat feet or something? Kind of
asking, Why are you, you know, desk jockey? Yeah. Why are you doing this job,
not out on the streets? And Al, you know, has a very sad story about
the tragic thing that happened to him, Al, the cop who has to deal
with the rest of his life, the very sad fact that he shot a kid
and killed some 13-year-old kid because he thought his gun was
whatever. But the story is framed so that it's like, oh, poor Al, what an
unfortunate thing. It's like, bro, it should not be your fucking choice to be
a cop anymore if you do something like that. He also says he had a
ray gun that looked real intense. Enough. Like,
what? Real enough, dude. And a ray gun. So I'm imagining,
like, one of those bulbous Mars attacks. Martian pistols, dude. Like,
come on, man. So, Lord, you know, so, Al. And I
think that the fact that it was his idea where he was like, oh,
the day after I shot that kid, I went, hey, Sarge, I think I'd
like to be at a desk. Like, you, dude, I think I'd like. You to
be in a holding cell. Mr. Powell, there's plenty of jobs you can do
that are not having a gun, and you can do one of those for the
rest of your fucking life. So, yeah, it always blows my mind. That he's like
the second to the main good guy in this movie. And he's
basically a child murderer who's trying to redeem himself. That's right.
Monkey jokes. Oh my God. So now we cut back to Agents
Johnson and Johnson. Yes. So the FBI agents are going to cut the power,
which they don't know will open up the final lock on the safe, but that's
what Hans has been counting on, right? So Theo has gotten him through the six
sort of more physical locks on the vault. And the last one left is the
electromagnetic that they can't cut the
it's going to cut off 10 square blocks or something like that when they cut
the power to completely black them out. And I love it. The guy who calls
in the power shutdown was one of the townies in Groundhog Day that hangs
out with Bill Murray. Okay. He looked familiar, too. Yeah.
And it was great that he's doing the like, hey, you know, this is my
ass if I do this thing, you know, and you get the competing guys telling
you what to do. Sure enough, they shut it
down. And it opens up the vault. And the vault is beautiful because not only
are there the marketable securities or the bear bonds, right? Which is cool. It shows
Theo flipping through them and they're in these varying amounts, like 50 grand, 400 grand,
all different amounts. And I think different currencies too. There was like Yen and
Deutsche Mark and something else. There was like a couple of them that were not
dollars, but yeah, yeah. And then also in there, just for the effect, since it's
a cool Japanese company, there's all this Japanese artifacts. It looks
like it would be in Steven Seagal's home dojo. How he would
decorate. You know, you need these, like, Samurai armor suits and all this
kind of. So I really enjoyed the. The opening of the Vault. It was absolutely.
And there's great. The music plays or whatever, and it's like, you know,
I can't remember which song it is now, but some classic music. And it's just
a glorious day for the bad guys. They get their fault, and they start emptying
it, basically, and putting things in the bags, and they're starting to work. Meanwhile,
the FBI
agents. Are now ordering the choppers. So they've been asked for helicopters to transport people
off. And Agent Johnson calls in the choppers or whatever, and he goes, this is
what he says. This is Agent Johnson. No, the other one. Get the choppers ready,
like, whatever. And they're bringing in not, of course, transport helicopters. They're bringing in what
they say gunships, right? Like attack helicopters.
The news van. So basically,
McLean, he looks bad and he gives Al this very long, hard to remember message
to relate to his wife. He's like, Dude, if I knew you were going to
talk for this long, I would have I just started writing, but now we're a
minute and a half into your ramble, and I'm not even sure if I'm at
the part I'm supposed to say to her yet. I think at the end it
was pretty much tell her, I'm sorry. She never heard me say, I'm sorry,
but he did take them a while to get there. It was. You know what?
My favorite version of that is the, Tell my wife,
just tell her. Like, that's my favorite way to do it, was where
they say it like that. So that's happening. And then the news asshole
is going to McClain's house and knocking on the door, and the nanny,
Paulina, is there. Pauline is like, no, you're not coming in. It's in the middle
of the night at this point. The kids are asleep. It's Christmas Eve. Like,
whatever. Like, screw off. It's Christmas Eve. We're not going to have a random guy
show up to the house. That's not what Christmas is all about.
And then he basically pulls her aside and says,
like, he pulls a. A Jeremy renner and says, hey, I'm going to call the
ins on you. Ice of the 80s. Yeah, exactly.
It's just up. So that's how they.
He. He sees that the C4 is all over the roof. That's right. Yeah.
Because he was kind of like, why does. He thought he used the only C4
when he blew up, you know, he sent it down the elevator shaft. He had
the bag. And then when he realized that Hans was after the detonators,
he goes, why does he still need detonators if I use the C4 on the
thing? And that's when he's like, why was he up on the roof? That must
be why. So he goes back up there and sees, of course, the ridiculous.
It's a ridiculous amount of C4. I mean, 40 or 50 of those multi-pound bricks.
I mean, it looks like a ton of explosive, right? Yeah, insane. Unfortunately for him,
that's when Carl finds him up there, and they start a fantastic
fight. It's not a single cut the way the They Live fight where it just
goes on, but it does go on for about four minutes, give or take,
four to five minutes, as we are cutting to other things, but they fight for
a long time. And they're finding things to hit each other
with. I like that. And I think at one point, John tells Carl.
I'm gonna fucking cut you. Up and I'm gonna fucking eat you. I'm gonna cook
you and eat you, he says at one point, which is like the most insane
thing. But I guess when you're fighting somebody like that, you're just kind of whatever
comes to mind, he's saying to threaten them. But yeah, he says, I'm gonna cut
you up and I'm gonna cook you and I'm gonna eat you. Like, really?
What the fuck? Yeah, and him and Carl are fighting. And now there's a
news broadcast on the TV, which is the McLean kids being
interviewed against their will,
woken up
on Christmas Eve. By this asshole, but Gruber clicks with him and he flips the
picture up. And sees, oh, that's the same. And now that he's seen John his
face and he knows, so he actually calls out to Holly and refers to her
as Mrs. McClane, right? Not Ms. Gennaro. And so, so the stakes
are raised here. The FBI guys now in their attack helicopter, they're cruising
in there. And the Robert Dahvi, the Johnson, he, he makes a comment
about like, oh, this is just like Saigon or what, like some Vietnam reference.
Saigon, how slick. And the other guy's like, I was He
was in middle school. But one comment that the Robert Dahvi character says is,
he's like, well, what do you figure for breakage? Oh, yeah. And he goes,
we might, we might lose 20 to 25% of the hostages. And he goes,
I can live with that. So, I mean, the plan is that we're going to
take it over, but we don't really care. We're not protecting the lives necessarily.
We just want an overall W here. Yeah, they're going to aim at the,
because they're imagining if the terrorists are all waiting for them with the hostages on
the roof like they were told they would be, they're just going to aim gonna
They're clip some innocents while they do that, but they're aiming for the terrorists.
They're trying. So as long as-- I mean, the important thing is that you try.
Yeah, sure. Fuck. God damn.
So at this point, Carl has clipped John in the shoulder
'cause their fight has continued on, and he does get a shot off with
just a pistol, thankfully not that ridiculous rifle he had. But he clips John in
the shoulder as he jumps back into the building, and the hostages
are being corralled up to the roof. So some of the other bad guys are
basically leading them up to the roof. And yeah,
there's a great line here where now Hans has Holly, he's kept her
kind of as a personal hostage. And he's gone down to where Theo is,
they're loading stuff from the vault, the barabons and stuff, and he's loading them into
a bag. And she looks and goes, For all your big speeches and everything,
you're nothing but a common thief. And he is so pissed at that. He is
sitting on the ground, kneeling on the ground doing this, and runs, he moves
to her in such a weird, cool way, but so angry. And he goes,
I am an exceptional thief, Mrs. McClane. And since I've upgraded to
kidnapping you, she should be more polite. Right. Like, Alan Rickman just
crushes that line. He is incredible in that
scene. So good. And she is, rightfully, just looks terrified. Oh, yeah.
'Cause who knows what this guy's capable of at this point. Right, 'cause he's just
coming. He's just coming to touch. And so McLean
and Carl are still fighting there. And McLean manages to get this chain
wrapped around Carl's neck. And just kind of push him.
Again, just a chain on some kind of a track to push things
around. It looks like the loading dock. Are they all the way down on the
ground floor at this point? Weird. I don't know where the hell in the building
they are. Yeah. But you know what? Suspend disbelief. Cool way for him to get
dispatched there. Quote unquote killed. Yes. Quote unquote.
Right. So McClane basically knows that the roof
is going to blow. The hostages are up there. Yes. And the helicopter's coming and
all he. He has no communication. So he's just shooting his gun. Like, yeah,
get the. Back down. Get back down. Yeah. And the helicopter's like, there's the guy
we're trying to kill. They clocked us, bureau. You got a shooter on the roof.
Yeah. So now he's in, like, a. A Richard Kimble situation where
he's. Yeah. He's getting blasted at by the good guys on the roof there.
And he's trying to get these hostages out of here. It's a cool scene where
he's sending the hostages back down the stairs. And they're walking by Carl
just hanging on that chain. Yikes. But now
Eddie, who's one of the last remaining not dead Hans
guys, I mean, there's Eddie, the guy who played the security guard, Theo is still
around, there's Hans and there's like one other guy at this point. And Eddie comes
down where Hans is and is like, Something's wrong, the hostage is coming back down.
And so Hans is like, Let's just blow the roof, let's do it now.
It'll be close enough. We'll get a bunch of them, whatever. And so he doesn't
know what's going on upstairs, right? But on the roof, John is tying a fire
hose around his waist to try to jump off the roof just to get away
from the chopper. But as he's doing that, Hans has got the detonator ready to
go and it's a great sequence. And it's like probably the most famous visual,
right, from the movie is John leaping off the
building. Hans has pressed the plunger of the detonator. The entire roof explodes,
engulfing both attack
choppers. Which I counted as five additional deaths, but it might have been even more.
And he flies off and it has to do the whole thing where he starts
trying to kick the window and then he's like, it's coming through, so he's shooting
it with the gun, he gets through, I mean, it's a great sequence. He has
to struggle to get the fire hose off his waist so that it doesn't drag
him back out the window into his death. I mean, really fantastic stuff.
His bloody feet hitting the window before he breaks it is
such a great effect there. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, that is
just an excellent scene. And the chopper, so yeah, I mean, there's multiple
people in these helicopters. It blows up and it crashes. And then
Robinson looks at it and he goes, We're gonna need some
more FBI guys. I love it. He says, We're gonna need some more FBI guys.
Or no, we're gonna need some new FBI guys. I guess.
I guess, yeah, I guess.
It's not a, We're gonna need a bigger boat type. It's close, though. I like
it, though. It's very good. I felt like that. So,
oh, so now, so Argyle is down there and he's heard some chatter
because earlier, When he was, when he was chilling in the limo, he was
hearing some like banter on the CB. Well, no, he saw the news. He saw
the news report was the thing that really tipped him off. Seeing the news report
of when Thornberg went to,
the McClain home and spoke to the, to the daughter, I think Argall
sees that and they make a big deal about like, there's a hostage situation at
Nakatomi Plaza. And he's like, Whoa, what? That's where I am, you know, like,
yeah. So he knows. And then he looks over and sees there is that big,
the big van that they showed up in the bad guys. Yeah. Wouldn't be
possible because we saw the inside of the van. When they all arrived, by the
way, there's nothing else in it. But an ambulance conveniently is in it and drives
out. And Theo sees this. Like, why would an ambulance drive out of a
vehicle that's so bizarre? Yeah. And Theo is the one driving it. And so Argyle
decides he's gonna. He's gonna go ahead and do something about this.
But. But wait, before he actually does anything, John has
arrived. Now he's flown off the roof, he's flying through, and he gets to
where Hans and Eddie and
Holly and. And one other guy are, and he sees, before he goes to them,
he notices he's only got two bullets left in his gun, and there are three
bad guys and his wife. Yeah, so Argyle
crashes into this ambulance that Theo's in. He doesn't kill Theo.
One way to do it would have been that Theo was all the way out
of the vehicle and he got- oh, yeah. Like if he'd shot him in ShamalAnd.
Right? But I think it was cool that Argyle gets
out and then he punches Theo. So like, knock him out cold.
And you know what? Open for future sequels, Theo not dead, so maybe we'll see
him again. Yeah, probably gets arrested, I would assume. But, you know, but yeah,
I love then too. So now we don't know exactly what's happening, but John
sees a wrapping station. There's like tape and wrapping paper
and stuff. And then he comes around the corner and the
guy who isn't Eddie or Hans, I don't remember, just gets smacked in the head
with the butt of something, whatever. He knocks him out, basically. Right. So now there's
just the two bad guys and Holly, and he comes around the in
the corner, and I love, he goes, Hans! Like, he just, like, the way he
yells it is so, like, it was. Kind of like Winthorpe
yelling in the sandstorm. Yes!
Yes! He's got the gun on his back, and he grabs it and basically yells,
Holly! And she ducks. So he shoots Hans, and it's, like, in the
chest or arm or-- It doesn't kill him right away. But then he goes,
and before Eddie can pick up his rifle, he shoots him between the eyes.
So he's done, and Hans starts falling back towards towards
the window. And that's when he says, Happy trails, Hans, is sort of the line
he gives there. Problem for everybody is that Hans still has a hold of Holly's
wrist. So as he's falling back towards the open window,
Holly's going with him. John has to fall, you know, jump forward,
grab her, and ends up reaching down and undoes the watch that
actually, I don't think we mentioned in the beginning, but Ellis makes a big deal
about how Holly was given a gold Rolex for how well she's doing, whatever the
company, and that he, like, unattach, you know, he, like, undoes that wristwatch, and that's
enough to get Hans to slip and actually fall. And I don't know if you've
read this, but it was a great, it's kind of like a pretty well-known little
fun fact, but in order to get that shot just right, so Alan Rickman was
held up about 20 feet above one of those big cushy, you know,
inflatable things with all green screens that they could, might have been blue back then,
but whatever result they could replace it with the view of going to a thing.
And to get a really good surprised, oh my God,
I'm falling look from him, they told him, we're gonna count to three and we're
gonna let you go. One. And they let him go. And so they got an
actual, like, you know, kind of look from him, but. That's a great, another kind
of one of the most iconic. That's him falling backwards. Yeah, that visage
of Alan Rickman falling backwards is fantastic. And then I don't
remember which character, maybe it's Paul Gleason's character says, I'm like,
I hope that's not a hostage as they're seeing him fall. His commentary was
really good. Oh my God. Yeah,
and then also because there was an explosion in an office building,
it's required to rain printer paper for like.
The next
two hours. Those are supposed to be the bear bonds. I think those are supposed
to be the bear bonds, yes. I was trying to see it. They all look
blank to me. Well, I'm sure they were, 'cause they couldn't, from the props department,
didn't print 5 million bear bonds, fake bear bonds to do it. But I think
the idea is that that part of the, you know, that's where it kind of
came from. But yeah, it's snowing. It's snowing in LA.
And as Holly and McClain are coming out of the building,
he sees Al. He's never seen Al. And Al didn't
say anything, but somehow they just knew that each other was the guy. So they
had a little, like, Hey, man, that's a real cop there.
Right, right. And then just a little cherry on top
for us, all of a sudden, Carl fucking emerges.
He survived dying 500 times. Oh my God. Hung by a
chain. How do you even get down from there? Although he is wearing, here's the
thing, he's wearing a blanket,
like somebody came and rescued him and is putting a
blanket on him, but he still has that crazy rifle with him. So he ends
up throwing the blanket off with that,
stair rifle and like, you know, go aiming at John, like he's gonna shoot him.
But who the hell helped him out? You know, got him down. And they didn't
take his gun. Didn't take his gun. I'm sure that gun's giving you a lot
of comfort right now, so we don't wanna take it from you. But yes.
Oh, that is a good point. I didn't know that he had been rescued.
Yeah. Yeah, and luckily Al is able to pretend
that Carl's head is an unarmed child and he takes him out.
Oh my God. And then, you know, the last little bit.
That we get here is, you. Know, McClane and Holly are there, and the news
guy is ready to get in their face with the microphone, and Holly punches
his ass out. And then Argyle drives through the closed, locked gate
of the parking garage, which apparently he could have done at any time. Yeah.
And they have to like... And Al goes to point his gun at him,
he goes, no, no, no, he's with me. But it's like, there are also 500
other law enforcement officers with weapons nearby. Argyle, are you gonna chill out? You're the
guy who figured it out. Right, yeah.
So, but yeah,
Yeah, that's, yeah, they get it right home with Argyle and. They'Re, you know,
is that what plays in the end? Let it snow to end it. Exactly,
so that's Die Hard. Gosh darn it, that's a good movie. It really is.
It really is. And I mean, with the Christmas thing,
it's like, yeah, it's inarguable. The number of
like Christmas related things that come into play, even the wrapping paper station being relevant
and all this kind of stuff, like it's very intentional.
my pick. I'll start off and I'm just gonna say it like this.
This is basically, in my opinion, an unimpeachable
action movie. As an action movie, it set standards.
It gave us, I think, and I'm not saying it's the first ever, it was
like the first massive hit that was like we talked about the everyman hero,
the guy who's not unstoppable, the guy who's not a superhuman. Arnold Schwarzenegger's
roles all through the 80s, they're fun, great action movies, but he was basically I
never really worried about him in Predator. I always figured out he'd figure out how
to get by the Predator. You see, whatever, you know? But, like, with John McLean,
you're like, since, like, dude, this dude's. He's all cut up. He's all beat up.
It's like, oh, this is crazy. Like, and he's just a cop. He's not,
like, some super soldier, right? He's not Rambo. So this movie did so
much for action movies. And then the fact that it's a Christmas movie, too,
and it, you know, that. Which makes it something that is, like, super on brand
to watch this time of year is fantastic. I literally.
I I
that all the little side characters are interesting and fun and add to the movie.
I already talked about how well of a job they do, how good of a
job they do making the villains who aren't the top guys interesting
and more than just, you know, random henchman number two. I see no
reason not to give a five to Die Hard. I'm a five out of five
for Die Hard. This is just, I think, one of the best action movies ever.
And so that's where I'm at. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to argue with that.
Yeah, even taking the Christmas elements outside of it completely and just
putting this as an action movie that came out in 1988, which,
you know, was. There was kind of a shift in action movies generally after
that. So this is a five for me. I'm not gonna drag
it out. This is absolutely a five out of five. It's super fun.
It was super influential. So there's lots of great stuff that we ended up getting
after the fact. And how many times has a movie been described as Die Hard
and. Yes. You know, right. Die Hard and whatever, you know,
speed. Is Die Hard on a bus. Yeah, dude. You know, it's like a basketball
player being the next George. Or whatever. You know, it's just a thing that you
use now to describe other films. That's how influential it is.
Super fun, not a dull moment. It is long, but it's
not for dragging things out. I mean, what do you
do? You're going to cut some action, you're going to cut some funny lines,
you're going to cut, you know, so I don't take anything out of this.
This is a solid five out of five. And please watch this on Christmas.
It's delightful, it's fun, it's a great one with the
adults when the kids go to bed, whatever. You can dip in at any time.
It's just, if you haven't seen it and you're still listening to this episode,
welcome to Earth once again, yeah. Well, yeah. So that's wonderful.
Five out of five for me. We are, the two dads are a 10 out
of 10 on Die Hard, which should surprise no one. And by the way,
if you're listening to this episode the day it comes out,
Merry Christmas Eve, because today is December 24th. Yeah, Merry Christmas Eve.
Which means, Nick, we have one more door on the dadvent calendar. But now,
I know most advent calendars actually stop at Christmas, but we're going through to the
end of December. All the way. There is another Christmas movie that is in
store for us. Why don't you tell us what it is? Yeah. Yeah. And,
and do remind me, actually, it being Christmas Eve, I know
we have our two dads, one movie, office Christmas party tonight. No,
no plus ones invited. Exactly. Me and you and employees standing there.
Yeah. So, yeah, this last one,
I, I know we're going to be past actual Christmas, you know, so it doesn't
have to be one that necessarily gets you as
I was super excited about Santa and eggnog and everything. And I thought maybe I'd
take another swerve to something that is much more arguably not
a Christmas movie. That's okay. So the main action of this film does take place
on Christmas Day. Love it. And we are going into the more
sports action genre here. We're gonna visit one of our
favorite characters from film history, a Rocky Balboa.
And we're gonna join Rocky, who's set to fight Ivan Drago
for free on Christmas Day. In Rocky IV,
they're fighting in Russia. He's chopping logs and the other guy has high
tech training. This is a really fun one. I don't think I've watched this in
like 15 years. So we'll see how it'll hold up, but I think this will
be some good 80s. I don't expect a 10 out of 10 from the two
dads, but that doesn't mean that it won't be a 10 out of 10 episode.
Rocky IV. I love it. Rocky IV, that's gonna be great. I do think for
me, I think I actually watched this movie three or four years ago, but it
had been a long time before then. One thing I remember about it is,
and I'll see how this pans out, but I remember there being not a ton
of plot and a lot of music. Music oriented montages that don't
have a lot happening to it. They're like training montages. There's a whole montage where
he's just driving around town at one point in his car for like a good
four minutes. It's really interesting. We'll see how it goes. I can't wait for it.
Funny enough, Rocky Balboa, my third favorite Ivan Drago in Apollo Creed, I'd like better
than Rocky Balboa, but that's okay. Incredibly likable. They're great. So,
yeah. So that's fantastic. Next week we'll do Rocky four and we will wrap
up the dadvent calendar and all of our Christmas themed movie choices.
That about wraps it up. So if you like what you hear and we hope
you do, please consider heading to Apple or Spotify and leaving us a five star
review. It really helps new folks find the show. If you want to drop us
a line, share your thoughts on an episode, tell us what we got wrong or
suggest a movie we should do next, you can do so at theshow@2dads1movie.com
that's the number two and the number one. You can also follow us on Instagram
at 2dads1movie and check out our website at 2dads1movie.com once again,
this has been Die Hard, another episode of 2 Dads 1 Movie. I'm Steve and
I'm Nick. Thank you so much for listening and we'll catch you next week.
Thanks everyone.