Bruce Willis pulls on his sweat-stained singlet to reprise - again - his alpha male hero, writes Tim Walker.
Los Angeles is a city with few iconic skyscrapers, but there is at least one that's familiar to millions of people who've never even been near southern California. This 35-storey tower of red granite and blue-tinted glass stands at 2121 Avenue of the Stars, set slightly apart from the other architectural giants of LA's Century City neighbourhood. Ronald and Nancy Reagan lived in the 34th-floor penthouse for a few years after leaving the White House. Its real name is Fox Plaza; you probably know it as Nakatomi Plaza.
In 1987, soon after its construction, the building became the headquarters of 20th Century Fox, just as the studio was searching for a location to film its latest blockbuster, Die Hard: a genre classic, which is now celebrating its 25th birthday with a commemorative box set (out tomorrow) and the imminent release of its fourth sequel. The story of a simple New York cop fighting heavily armed terrorists on the upper floors of the aforementioned Nakatomi Plaza, Die Hard remains the paradigmatic, one-man-against-all-the-odds action thriller. Its hero, John McClane, played by Bruce Willis, quickly became the model for numerous on-screen heroes.
Die Hard also provided the gold standard for the meaningless, two-word action-movie title: Under Siege, Boiling Point, Hard Boiled, Sudden Death. Its own sequels gradually decreased in quality as the formula was diluted, though Die Hard 2 ("They say lightning never strikes twice... They were wrong") is a fine follow-up; Die Hard: With a Vengeance gets by with help from one of Samuel L. Jackson's most memorable performances; and Die Hard 4.0, known in the US as Live Free or Die Hard features McClane hitting a helicopter with a car.
McClane tumbled down the fire escape into a Hollywood dominated by invulnerable knuckleheads played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. But he became the most enduring of the era's action heroes precisely because he was fallible and flawed, an almost-regular guy with whom the neurotic New Man could, if not relate, at least sympathise. He got by on his wit and his wisecracks, as much as his physical attributes: a latter-day Philip Marlowe (with a Heckler & Koch submachine gun). He has been known to blub.
