Why I love Die Hard, and why I hope Bruce Willis never dies

As far as Die Hard fans go...  in my opinion, the filmmakers cast the roles perfectly, and plotted the movie exactly, to make the audience feel every moment of this poor man's night.

Allow me a paragraph to gush (eh, it actually turns into 3). Recall that John McClane doesn't like air travel, so he's feeling really anxious and one of Holly's associates recommends he take his shoes off and exercise his toes on the carpet to help him relax. This little detail comes back in a huge, gritty way, because all the action takes place without his shoes on, shattered glass and all.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that his wife had assumed a different name while out in LA. These aren't the people of his city he feels duty-bound to protect: he is a fish out of water protecting people who don't even care that he exists. He was off-duty, the local authorities don't want to help, a stupid salesman gives up McClane's identity; in short, every moment of the film conveys the burden of being the only man willing and able to do something about a life-threatening situation for a lot of people. Only Carl (or Al as he's called in this flick), the greatest TV family man and cop, sees the body on his car's roof and decides to do something to try to help.

The icing on the cake, the comedy. Bruce Willis set the mark for how to deliver a one-liner in that film, and I honestly don't think that anybody else these days has the swag to pull it off (maybe Jason Statham, actually, but his talents are really underused, at best). McClane has a twisted, brutally comical view of things, so much so that he decides to imagine himself as a TV dinner. Or that, since it's Christmas and all, he would deliver to Hans Gruber a dead terrorist's body with "Now I have a machine gun, ho ho ho" written on the sweater in blood. I couldn't ask for a more suitable man for the job than Bruce.

I dunno how to describe it. I am certainly not the authority on that specific movie, my friends and I all like it a bunch, but I guess what I'm trying to convey here is that I really love great films, not just good or okay ones. Not films that earn a lot of money at the box office, necessarily, but films that come together down to every insignificant detail to make a complete product that totally sucks you in, and spits you out glad to have experienced it. Die Hard absolutely was a great film, and even though most people watching it just get taken in with the dumb jock swag and explosions (which are admittedly excellent), it's the smart features that really make it worth remembering. Although, I feel this strongly about all of the films in my personal "top 10," not just Die Hard.