Even heroes have the right to bleed.

As far as action movies go, Die Hard may be the ultimate one of all time. Not necessarily the best mind you. But I can't think of any other film that mixes action, comedy and serious drama into a full package the way this one does and has the results come out this well.

Die Hard is not the only action film that I find myself going back to again and again. I also love the Lethal Weapon series and there are other mixes of action and drama that I enjoy such as Bullitt. Yet there is something in this movie that keeps drawing me back to it.

What makes Die Hard stand out is that its main character is a human hero, not a superman. John McClane is simply an ordinary working New York cop who finds himself in the midst of a nightmarish situation that he has to deal with. For that character to work, the producers needed an actor who could make the McClane character believable. They made the right choice in picking Bruce Willis.

Willis, despite what some of his more recent efforts may lead us to believe, can actually act quite well when he's in the right movie. His McClane is a character that is not invincible. Indeed we see him bleed when he falls down and despite the fact that he does die hard, it is not inconceivable that he may fail in his mission. That adds more weight to the story and elevates it above the normal shoot-em-up flick. There's no way a Steven Seagal or Sylvester Stallone (despite the fact that both did copy the Die Hard formula in their own flicks) could have pulled this role off.

I won't spend too much time on plot details, as most viewers have already seen Die Hard or doubtlessly heard about it. New York Cop John McClane (Willis) travels to Los Angeles to visit his wife (whom he's separated but not divorced from) at Christmas time. She works for an international conglomerate that has its headquarters in a very tall office building. McClane meets up with her at her office and waits for the office party to break up. When, just as luck would have it, a band of international terrorists show up. Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) leads the terrorists, who seize control of the buildings maintenance, shutting down telephone lines and putting the building on lockdown, and then pull off an armed capture of all the office partygoers. Their intent is to use the hostages as a means of distracting from their real intent, which is an electronic funds transfer of millions of dollars (at one point the head of the company asks Gruber "What kind of terrorist are you?" and Gruber chuckles and replies "Who said anything about terrorists?").

McClane of course, has the fortune of not being in the vicinity of the guests when the terrorists strike. And so he escapes to an unoccupied floor and from there sets out to sabotage the terrorists little Christmas party.

From that point on, the movie sets out to mix exciting action sequences with moments of human drama and some very funny humor.

Part of the humor comes from the interplay between McClane and Gruber. Rickman's acting ability makes him a superb foil for Willis and he gets in some clever lines to his nemesis. Gruber is a rather smart villain who does not like associating with many of the rather dim bulbs in his band of marauders and that becomes apparent during a conversation with the local police chief.

There is also the interplay between McClane and a local area cop named Al Powell (Reginald Veljohnson of TV fame as Carl Winslow on Family Matters). There is a scene where McClane has utilized a makeshift bomb to take out terrorists who were shooting at a group of trapped LAPD officers and in the aftermath he asks if the building is on fire. Powell replies "No. But it's going to need a paint job and a sh**load of screen doors". There are also some moments of genuine drama when Powell tells McClane why he left the street beat and when McClane (fearing that he might not make it through the night) asks Powell to tell his wife that he loves her. There is also some hilarious comic interplay between McClane and the incompetent local area police chief.

I do not want to dig too much into the action sequences, since there is a certain element of fun in seeing them for the first time without being aware of what is going to happen. Just let me say that you will see much had to hand combat and a few scenes that literally leave people hanging.

Die Hard is more than just a great action movie. The performances by Willis, Rickman, Veljohnson and Bonnie Bedelia as McClane's wife, the humorous one-liners and the moments of quite drama mix well with the action to give us an all around great movie. Period. Yes it did spawn a number of sequels (which were good, although not up to the quality of the original) and imitations (the majority of which were pitiful), yes Bruce Willis' career has been hit and miss since then. But the greatness of Die Hard is still apparent even now, almost 20 years after the movies release. If that's not a sign of quality in Hollywood, I don't know what is.