Boy Movies #10
Fine, I wrote about Die Hard
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Last Friday, I received an earth-shattering text from my good Judy and fellow AMC Theaters disciple, Mary, which read: “thinking abt how JUST FRIENDS is the rare xmas boy movie.” What followed was a spirited discussion that you’ll have to pay us to read (my Venmo is still @Allison-Picurro), but the gist was that it’s an important entry in the very limited pantheon of Christmas boy movies, a genre largely populated with girl movies and kids movies (this is a separate, genderless category I simply don’t care to get into because I am not a mother).
But Just Friends is, in fact, a perfect example: It stars the boyest of boy actors, Ryan Reynolds, and iconic 2000s boy actress Anna Faris, it’s about a fat loser (I’m allowed to say that) who grows up cool and gets the girl he wanted in high school, and it’s full of lines like, “Raise your hand if your brother’s a homo!” (To be clear, I love this movie.) Most importantly, it’s set during Christmas. It’s the kind of movie that veers just enough into Christmas rom-com territory to technically be classified as a Christmas rom-com, but not so much that it alienates its target audience AKA boys who are disgusted by festive celebrations and love. Do you see where I’m going with this? Okay, here’s where I’m going with it: I watched Die Hard.
I read about them in Time magazine
Remember those few years where the “is Die Hard a Christmas movie” debate was inescapable? Oh my god it was so annoying. I literally do not care about that whole thing even one tiny bit. But Die Hard has been requested by several readers and I’ve gone on record saying that I’ll write about basically whatever anyone tells me to, so I gathered up two members of the board during our weekend trip to the American Midwest1 and settled in to watch it for the first time. Before this viewing, any knowledge I had of Die Hard came from that episode of Bob’s Burgers where Gene stages a Die Hard musical, which means I went in more or less blind.
In general, I like movies that are about a special boy trying to save the world by himself, I like movies with a distinct New York vs. Los Angeles energy, and I like Bruce Willis. You maybe don’t need me to describe this film to you, since I believe I was one of the last remaining people on the planet to have not seen it, but for contextual purposes I will anyway: Bruce Willis plays New Yawk cop John McClane who flies to L.A. on Christmas Eve for his estranged wife’s office Christmas party (any office forcing employees to attend a party on Christmas Eve should be investigated by the government), which is hijacked by a band of German terrorists led by Alan Rickman (go all the way off) who take everyone in the building hostage (including the aforementioned estranged wife!) in an elaborate plot to steal millions of dollars. And you’re never going to believe this but John McClane? Well, he’s the only person who can face off against them. It was directed by John McTiernan, who I literally just discovered has a section on his Wiki titled “Criminal charges, felony conviction, and incarceration.” He also directed Predator.
Die Hard is obviously a boy movie in every way, a movie about being a boy who is stronger than all the other boys in body and spirit, and because of that is forced to take matters into his own hands in order to rescue his wife. Its politics are sort of all over the place — it’s like, pro-cop but anti-FBI? You’re almost there, girlinas — and it has a bit of a slow start. But there are plenty of details I wasn’t expecting: Bruce Willis is essentially in a one-man play as he prowls around the office, finding increasingly creative ways to keep himself from being seen, meanwhile Alan Rickman is slaying his take on an eccentric gay villain.
I was surprised by the fact that John McClane isn’t quite an impervious and untouchable man hero, which is how the members of Die Hard’s passionate fanbase speak about him. (Men are always like, “He’s so strong,” and I’m like, “Okay… why do you care…”) He spends much of the movie rambling anxiously to himself and looking overwhelmed by his own panicked decision-making — when he crawls into an air duct using only a machine gun as an anchor, he looks appropriately uncertain. He’s quippy, but not in that exhaustive Russo brothers way, and he’s only cool, calm, and collected when he’s conversing with his only ally, played by Reginald VelJohnson, or when he’s exchanging barbed words with Rickman’s Hans Gruber. He’s under-prepared for a battle, right down to his bare feet, which I found to be a fun and quirky touch; it gives him vulnerability, and the way it comes back to hinder him later is well done. At one particularly cinematic moment, he dramatically jumps off a roof that's about to blow and lives to tell the tale, but John McClane is a compelling hero because everything else about him is so human. It makes the crazy stuff almost halfway believable. Die Hard made me unspeakably sad about Willis’ aphasia diagnosis — we’re experiencing a critical dearth of guys who can bring such a level of humanity to big action movies2. Call me when Chris Pratt is willing to do a movie like Death Becomes Her. JK, don’t.
Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Who cares. Sure. No. It doesn’t matter! I am not here to answer that or even engage in that dated-ass discussion, but I do wonder if the reason it was such a thing had anything to do with the inherent femininity of Christmas as a holiday. It’s Jesus’ birthday if you subscribe to that, but it’s mostly a time for sparkly lights and cheesy music and wrapping your little gifts up in colorful paper. Where do the BOYS fit in? I guess in a movie like Die Hard, where Christmas is only a backdrop to EXPLOSIONS and BEING A BADASS. (Men love the word badass.) Is Christmas a girl holiday? Have I finally gone too far with this concept? Sound off in the comments.
I interviewed The White Lotus’ Essex hunk, Leo Woodall, about the season 2 finale. He came up with all of Jack’s stupid tattoos!
I went to see Top Gun: Maverick for the fifth time last week, and had the pleasure of introducing it to Sarah and friend of the newsletter, Nicole (who has her own amazing newsletter), and they both loved it so much that we had to post up in a diner for a full hour afterwards to debrief. Go see it in a theater while the re-release is still happening, the experience is unparalleled.
Literally begging Austin Butler to take me to Disneyland.
My two cents on the St. Louis arch: pretty cool.
By the way, Bruce Willis is so hot in this movie that I kept saying, “Wow,” like I was seeing a handsome man for the first time. Maybe I was!