Classic Film – Die Hard (1988)

World-weary role turned Bruce Willis into a Hollywood legend.

You know a movie’s popular when it has not one, but four sequels, and Die Hard is going so strong, the latest version is still wowing cinema audiences across the UK.

For some, even this year’s A Good Day To Die Hard is just the latest that can’t get close to the 1988 original.

It sparked Bruce Willis’s career into overdrive, and started a whole new type of movie all by itself!

When hostages are taken in a Los Angeles skyscraper, police officer John McClane is called upon to sort out a tricky mission, keeping the innocents safe while dealing with some very scary baddies.

Alan Rickman plays the suave-but-ruthless Hans Gruber perfectly, and McClane, played by Willis, has his work cut out to defeat him.

McClane is only in the city to try to sort things out with his estranged wife, and it’s while he’s in the bathroom freshening up that the assailants move in and start their mayhem.

Willis plays it just right, world-weary but darned sure nobody is going to pull off a crime this audacious while he’s in the building.

Did the world agree? Well, it took in over six times what they spent to make it, and Bruce became a superstar because of it, so we can safely say yes.

To be honest, we’d already begun to fall in love with him, in his role as David Addison alongside gorgeous Cybill Shepherd in TV hit Moonlighting.

A mixture of hard-nosed detectives, but with a sense of humour, its 66 episodes were eagerly awaited by a global audience, and the pair of them had a fantastic chemistry.

That was partly down to their deciding not to get involved with each other in real life Cybill turned down Robert de Niro, Jack Nicholson and several stars over the years, and she claimed none of them ever spoke a word to her again!

With Willis, they thought about an affair and then decided not to, which tells us a lot about on-screen chemistry!

After Die Hard, Willis shot to the top of Hollywood. We all took to that humorous glint in his eye, even when he was shooting baddies all around.