Anniversary of Die Hard
On July 12, 1988 in the town of Westwood in California (USA), the premiere of the film "Die Hard" had taken place. Director John McTiernan.
The film was not presented at any significant film festivals. It was nominated for an Oscar, but only in several technical nominations, and even those did not receive.
The opinions of film critics regarding the "Die Hard" quite diverged from the opinion of the mass cinema viewer. Based on audience ratings, both IMDB and Kinopoisk included "Die Hard" in their Top 250 lists. But film critics ...
For example, the critic of the New York Times, Caryn James, described the film as "“Die Hard” is exceedingly stupid, ... partly an interracial buddy movie, partly the sentimental tale of a ruptured marriage, the film is largely a special-effects carnival full of machine-gun fire, roaring helicopters and an exploding tank...."
Hal Hinson, Washington Post Staff Writer, wrote about the movie: "Die Hard" is a logistical wonder, a marvel of engineering, and relentlessly, mercilessly thrilling. It has masterfully executed effects, a pile-driver steady pace and a sleek, nonporous design. Add a percussive, big-star performance to the state-of-the-art mechanics, turn up all the knobs, and you've got a sure-fire, big-bucks, major-studio-style summer attraction... "Die Hard" is all these things, but it's not a movie to like. It gets your heart pounding, then makes you hate yourself for it.."
And our esteemed Roger Ebert rated the film with only two out of four possible stars. Moreover, Ebert explained what is the main reason for the rejection of this film: "a gratuitous and unnecessary additional character: the deputy police chief". According to Ebert, "As nearly as I can tell, the deputy chief is in the movie for only one purpose: to be consistently wrong at every step of the way and to provide a phony counterpoint to Willis' progress. The character is so willfully useless, so dumb, so much a product of the Idiot Plot Syndrome, that all by himself he successfully undermines the last half of the movie. . ... Without the deputy chief and all that he represents, "Die Hard" would have been a more than passable thriller. With him, it's a mess, and that's a shame, because the film does contain superior special effects, impressive stunt work and good performances, especially by Rickman as the terrorist."
But moviegoers around the world, as noted above, praised this film. Suffice it to say that the box office, which amounted to more than 140 million dollars, five times exceeded the funds spent on the production of the film (28 million dollars). In addition, the ratings put up by the audience on the IMDB and Kinopoisk websites are also very high: 74% of users of these sites rated the film from 8 to 10.
Based on the foregoing, the rating of the movie "Die Hard" according to the version of FilmGourmand was 8.446, due to which it took 342nd Rank in the Golden Thousand.
