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Die Hard - A Christmas Movie? Absolutely!

Hi everyone.

Along with the Northern Lights, the Rolling Stones live and a golden eagle, I never thought I would see the movie Die Hard. But now I have and although film buffs may throw down their copies of Barry Norman's biography in horror, I can confirm that in my opinion anyway, it absolutely is a Christmas movie.

So what qualifies the vest-wearing, Beretta 92F-toting, man-of- few-words Bruce Willis epic to be a fully paid-up member of this Holy of Holies? After all, Home Alone, White Christmas or Love Actually, it most definitely is not.

I can't believe you got me socks again.

The most obvious answer is that the story takes place on Christmas Eve and continues into Christmas Day and what can be more "Christmassy" than that? The baddies, led by the late great and sweetly sinister Alan Rickman, arrive as an office Christmas party is in full swing and there are numerous references throughout the film to Christmas, including Santa jokes and Christmas music, not to mention lots of violent deaths. (Another slice of turkey, anyone?) 

But just because a movie is set at Christmas time and contains recognisable Christmas tropes, does that make it a Christmas movie? And on the flip side of this argument, does a movie have to be set around the festive period to qualify? If that were the case, then the classic 1944 musical Meet Me In St. Louis which covers a whole year wouldn't count, even though it features on many Christmas movie lists and was the official debut of the enduringly, popular Christmas song Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.

I'm so pleased we subscribed to Disney+ this year.

Maybe the whole Christmas movie debate is more of a marketing issue, anyway. We tend to think of films that are shown around Christmas time as "Christmas movies", simply because the movie moguls planned for their films to be released or repeatedly broadcast in the run up to December, as opposed to the middle of July. After all, I don't remember there being any singing Santas in The Sound of Music and not a single reindeer was in sight when Steve McQueen and his cronies attempted to escape from Stalag Luft III. But if these films are not shown at least somewhere over the Christmas period, we feel cheated.

And as for the argument that Christmas movies should focus on the more positive aspects of the festive season such as joy, generosity, love and nostalgia, this implies that Christmas is the same for everyone which is clearly not the case. If every Christmas movie had to be all jolly jingle bells and cute candy canes, then It's A Wonderful Life certainly shouldn't have become a Christmas movie classic. Even Home Alone, with its questionable premise of an abandoned and abused kid, (even though that kid was Macaulay Culkin), shouldn't really have made the cut.

Hurry up, someone else is after that Christmas tree!

In the end, I think it should come down to your own personal definition of what makes a Christmas movie, regardless of whether someone, somewhere, has classed it as a CM or not. It might be an endearing romantic comedy that you can enjoy after the kids have finally gone to bed, snuggled up on the sofa with your Other Half, of half a bottle of Prosecco if that's your preference. It might be a nostalgic movie that you love to revisit every Christmas and which you can safely watch with all the family, even Great Aunt Flo who thought there was too much sex in Brief Encounter. 

Or it might be an action-packed, thrill-a-minute adventure film with amazing special effects (even though it came out in 1988) humour, pathos, romance, a fabulous musical score and (Spoiler Alert) a decent, if somewhat reckless central character who,assisted by some likeable minor characters, allows good to triumph over evil and which, if only for two hours and eleven minutes, takes your mind off all the things that are getting you down at this time of year.

Can you believe they are charging £2.50 for a mince pie?

And that's why, for me, Die Hard is absolutely a Christmas movie. 

Let me know what you think! 


 

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