This action movie may not be a classic work in the sense of great cinema or of winner of awards, but it has become a commercial and cultural phenomenon. It was immediately a huge box office success, it led to no less than four sequels, and the franchise earned a worldwide total of $1.4 billion. Meanwhile it has come to be regarded as one of the best action films of all time and a requirement of any Christmas television schedule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
John McLane (Bruce Willis) is a New York cop who finds himself in a Los Angeles skycraper when an office Christmas party is taken over by a heavily-armed and ruthless gang led by the German Hans Gruber (the English Alan Rickman). Initially bare foot and wearing just vest and trousers, McLane single-handedly turns the tables on his foes. Essentially the success of the movie was down to its depiction of McClane as a vulnerable and fallible protagonist, in contrast to the muscle-bound and invincible heroes of other films of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The film made a star of Willis, who previously was only known for his television work in “Moonlighting”, and he eventually appeared in all five films in the franchise. How sad that this action hero subsequently fell victim to dementia. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This action movie may not be a classic work in the sense of great cinema or of winner of awards, but it has become a commercial and cultural phenomenon. It was immediately a huge box office success, it led to no less than four sequels, and the franchise earned a worldwide total of $1.4 billion. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29985,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29984\/revisions\/29985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}