The greatest Christmas Double Bill in history! Bruce Willis stars in the role that made him a super star: John McClane is an old style hero: smoking cigarettes, cracking jokes and killing bad guys. The first Die Hard (1988) is considered the greatest action film of all time. Why is that so? I tried to analyze it and came up with this. First of all; it is really, really tense. John McClane (Willis) is locked up in a building with a bunch of heavily armed and completely ruthless German terrorists. What are the odds of survival? Minimal. This is survival action optimally done. It is fun to watch a guy – who is not really scared of death, but definitely no narcissistic psychopath either – face impossible odds. Secondly, the screenplay is intelligent and the casting is terrifically done. Part 2 is off course (this is the sequel after all) BIGGER! It takes place at an airport, which is taken over by terrorists who want to free a South American dictator (Franco Nero) who is landing soon. Groovy! In a magazine article on an airplane read by one of the characters, a picture is shown of Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) and Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) in Lethal Weapon 2. This is a sequel that was indeed even better than the original. Die Hard 2 is not, although you could argue for it. Film critic Roger Ebert thought so and wrote a terrific review about the sequel (he curiously gave the first movie only two stars out of four). I understand his point of view about the sequel, although the story is even more unbelievable than the first, Finish director Renny Harlin, who took over from John McTiernan from the first, did a great job. It misses the claustrophobia of the first one, taking place at an airport rather than a high-rise office building. However, this creates new tense situations as the terrorists can take down airplanes and do so. The horror of a plane crash is captured perfectly in the second one as the terrorists purposefully let a passenger airplane crash. Thereby, they make the main baddie – William Sadler – even worse than Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) in the first one. Still, Die Hard 2 loses momentum a little bit during the second half (especially after the clever plot twist) and therefore I still think the first movie is superior. The endings of both movies give you this very warm Christmas feeling indeed. In part 1, John meets his pal Al for the first time, and then Al kills Karl and proves he is ready again for joining the force (he got a desk job after accidentally shooting a thirteen-year old kid with a fake gun). In the second movie, John blows up the plane with terrorists and thereby creates landing lights for all the other planes that were close to crashing, including the one that carries his wife. Then he tells her he loves her so much and they carry off in a modern sledge accompanied by Frank Sinatra’s ‘Let It Snow’. It makes me all warm inside and the same goes for the fantastic first part ending.Therefore, Die Hard is just the greatest Christmas movie ever. Die Hard 2 adds to the fun.