Die Hard (1988)

	Also Known As: Piège de cristal (French)
	Year of first release: 1988
	Director: John McTiernan (Predator, Last Action Hero, The Hunt for Red October, The 13th Warrior)
	Actors: Bruce Willis (Die Hard 1-5, Looper), Alan Rickman (Galaxy Quest, Harry Potter 1-8), Bonnie Bedelia
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 06.11.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: John McClaine (Willis), a New York cop, finds himself in the middle of a terrorist attack while visiting his wife (Bedelia) in Los Angeles.
Review: Die Hard is probably the best of what was done as Action films in the 80's. I have seen it countless times when I was young but not in the past 5-10 years, and maybe never in Original version. I feared a bit that it would have aged badly and that I wouldn't appreciate it so much, that the jokes would be dated (like it is the case for Commando with Schwarzenegger). It turned out to be as good as I remembered, plus this time the pretty good Blu-ray edition allowed me to spot many new details I had never seen before, and enjoy the perfect framing and timing of the shots, the whole thing accompanied by a tense music and powerful sound effects. Bruce Willis really became an Action Hero then, and I had forgotten that before being Professor Severus Snape, Alan Rickman was Hans Gruber, refined but cold-blooded terrorist. As already said, what impressed me most was the perfect framing and timing of the shots, a lesson of cinema (it seems redundant with what I wrote yesterday about Dressed to Kill!). Perfect image composition, location of such and such detail in the frame, travelling backwards, some lens flare here and there, and magic scenes like the fall of Hans Gruber, or the slow focusing along the policeman gun cannon at the end. A pleasure for the eyes. I will probably continue with the three sequels soon (I have already seen the fourth).
Rating: 9 /10