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Join Jim and Greg as they fume over the obscene process by which Congress shoveled a lot of wasteful spending into the combined omnibus and COVID relief spending bill that will do some good for small businesses. But while disgusted with the process, they are excited about the doubled tax deduction for three martini lunches! And they address comments from Die Hard director John McTiernan that the film is anti-capitalist, but they just might veer off into other aspects of this cinematic masterpiece.
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Die Hard is – or at least was supposed to be – anti-capitalist? Is that like how All In The Family was supposed to be making fun of Archie Bunker who turned out to be the everyman hero?
Charlie Brown, 2020: “Isn’t there anyone who can tell me the true meaning of Die Hard?”
To pre-empt Taras:
Remember, Jim Geraghty is always wrong.
In Die Hard (the first one), only ONE of the Agents Johnson (no relation…) had been in Vietnam. The other one (black) says, “I was in Junior High, dickhead.”
If you’ve read his latest in the Between Two Scorpions series, Hunting Four Horsemen, (came out earlier this month), there are scenes that take place in the tower, and some not so veiled references to Die Hard. There’s even a “second generation” FBI agent Johnson.
I’ve never been interested in reading “thrillers.”
Until Greg mentioned the director’s run in with the FBI, I assumed he would show the FBI in a good light now. After all, they are abusing their power and going after Republicans.
The film’s viewpoint is that of the disillusioned radical, like the woman lawyer in The Big Chill (made only five years before Die Hard), who used to defend black radicals but now works for corporations “because they only rape the land.”*
The idealistic, left-wing freedom fighters in Die Hard turn out to be nothing more than mass murderers for money. If they are the alternative, then the Japanese corporation starts looking pretty good. It’s also clear that John McClane‘s wife loves working there, implying that it treats women employees well.
On the other hand, the “working class hero” is an NYPD cop, which makes the film problematic as of 2020, given that cops — especially white cops — are no longer supposed to be portrayed as heroes. Thus, in the new David E. Kelley TV melodrama, Big Sky, the avuncular Montana state trooper turns out to be in cahoots with a — serial killer? Sex trafficker? I didn’t stay around to find out.
*It wouldn’t surprise me if that line gets edited out of future releases.
I never interpreted those scenes as Hans and company being “disillusioned radicals”. The use of the names of the various radical groups in the conversation with the police was pure cover and a stalling tactic. Hans even says “I read about them in Time magazine”.
And the radical group he claimed to belong to, said they had kicked him out. Maybe because they found out that all he wanted was money for himself. Like Bernie Sanders getting kicked out of the commune.
Maybe. He’s just a psycho. Here is a job where I get to kill people and blow stuff up. Cool! Now lets leverage those skills into a retirement plan. I dont take Hans to be disillusioned because he never bought into the illusion.
I said, the film’s (or McTiernan’s) viewpoint is that of the disillusioned radical, not the villains’ viewpoint.
The idealistic, left-wing freedom fighters turn out to be murderous phonies. It’s irrelevant if, in their imaginary biographies before the film begins, we conceive of them as disillusioned (e.g., by the death throes of the Soviet Union) or always insincere.
But that’s exactly wrong. If “The Film” wanted to portray them that way, why would the director have gone out of his way to insert dialogue demonstrating that they were NOT in fact idealistic left-wing freedom fighters?
Exactly! The film’s point is that, in spite of early appearances, they are “NOT in fact idealistic left-wing freedom fighters”.
The film makes the audience privy to the gang’s private conversations, so that viewers learn, maybe a third of the way in, that this is a heist, not a terrorist attack.
However, the robbers’ getaway plan depends on the authorities believing that they are suicide terrorists who blew themselves up as a political statement.
So the film consistently depicts the robbers as two-faced, presenting themselves as political terrorists to the public, while behind the scenes they are simply greedy robbers and murderers.
Maybe the point was that McTiernan thought – or had come to think – that way about most of his “fellow travelers?” They weren’t in it for purity, and so let HIM down?
Its a way for him to isolate his politics from political violence.