In Praise Of John McClane

The appeal of John McClane is that he is a baldy man in a sweaty vest. While action heroes before him, from Errol Flynn to James Bond, were able to save the day, get the girl and kill the bad guy without getting their hair mussed up, McClane gets hurt. A lot. And he never gives up. Who could forget the sight of him pulling glass out of his bare, bleeding feet in the first of the Die Hard films? In Die Hard 4.0, the fact that Willis, in his fifty-second year, is older and balder, hardly seems to matter. He's more than held his own in recent years, playing McClane-alikes in 16 Blocks, Sin City and Hostage. In Die Hard's fourth instalment, it's the villains who've been given a makeover. Why bomb a building when you can use a computer to bomb ALL the buildings?


The threat may be high-tech but the fourth installment boils down to McClane breaking into a building, his hacker sidekick doing something tricksy, before everything explodes. Director Len Wiseman admitted as much. "Our villain is high-tech, but the way McClane deals with him is low-tech," the filmmaker told 'USA Today'. "A fistfight still solves a lot of problems." Not to mention commandeering a car and embarking on a ludicrous chase across town. After causing a humungous pile-up involving dozens of vehicles, including a petrol-tanker and a helicopter, his passenger asks him, not unreasonably, "Why are you so calm - have you done that kind of stuff before?" Willis, of course, replies with his laconic smirk.

As well as The Willis, Die Hard 4.0 saw Silent Bob himself, Kevin Smith, a real life McClane fan, grab a piece of Brucie's action. Whatever tensions there may have been between the pair on the shooting of Cop Out (previously titled A Couple Of Dicks), the slacker auteur confessed on his blog, prior to the release of Die Hard 4.0, that "for years, I have been in love with Bruce Willis. Not the 'drop your nuts in my mouth' kinda love, mind you; the 'Oh my God - Bruce Willis is the coolest motherfucker on the planet' type of adoration we reserve for the people who set the tone of our early, impressionable years." Yippie kai yay, indeed.