Known as one of the best action films of 1980s, and released at a time when the genre was on a downslide, Die Hard is a landmark film that breathed life and originality into an area of cinema where only formulas were proven reliable.  What I've never understood is why it has always been so strictly defined as a pure action film when its subtle, yet consistent, tongue-in-cheek approach to the material makes it closer to a satire of one than most people will admit.  The film reeks of machismo and scene after scene work to challenge, then placate the macho male ego, pitting Bruce Willis' John McClane character square against every character type and societal guard dog that attempts to contain his pure, unadulterated testosterone.  It's a fantasy, or at the very least far closer to a dream than reality, where bottled up masculine aggression is placed in a battlefield where it can never lose.  Not only is McClane a vigilante cop working against the orders of the Los Angeles police (it's also important to note New York's tough-guy image clearly towers over L.A.'s blaze, laid-back image) and the F.B.I., but also one who at first is seemingly protecting a corporate structure.  It never appears that he is operating on motivation, though he obviously wishes to save his wife who recently left him, but rather the instinctive need to be challenged.  Along the way he manages to "inadvertently "cause the death of his wife's flirtatious shmuck of co-worker, exploit the shortcomings of another city's police force, save the day while destroying the oppressive corporate structure that, in his mind, took his wife away, and of course win her back.

Everything in Die Hard flies in the face of convention and while you will find many clichés throughout, they are used to perfectly traject themes that had never been thoroughly explored in action films before.  It has everything expected from an action film - the villain, machine guns, explosions, blood, and all that good stuff - but is precisely structured to dominate everything the unchecked male ego stands against (from greed and ineptitude in the individual or conglomerate form, to the guy hitting on your wife) and fulfill the ultimate male fantasies (winning the wife back on your terms and the good cop's overcoming of his deep-seeded fear in the end).  The claustrophobic nature the film takes on from remaining contained in a single building adds not only to the intensity of the action, but gives meaning to the poetically absurd conclusion in which the final explosion can only be interpreted in one way.  Our hero is run through the hoops, but while he is alone and greatly outnumbered, McTiernan never once lets us believe anyone else is in control of his fantasy.  It's rare to see an action film that strives to be about more than giant explosions and special effects and even rarer to find one that exceeds.  Die Hard provides the explosive excitement expected from an action film, but has a certain self-awareness that helps it transcend the boring, predictable, and formulaic nature of the many films to which it has been compared in the past 15 years.