Blu-Ray Review - Die Hard (1988)

The Movie:

Die Hard stars Bruce Willis as NYPD officer John McClane who has come to visit his estranged family for Christmas in LA, but before he does that he will have to save his wife and the other workers from a team of terrorists who have seized control of the office building where she works.

Die Hard is nothing short of a true classic and for my money the best action film after Mad Max 2, Willis is on top form and Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber is also just delightful, director John McTiernan brilliantly uses the Fox Plaza and the surroundings of it to give the film a real world feel, the music by Michael Kamen and the effects by Richard Edlund are also superior here: 5 out of 5.

The Blu-Ray:

Sadly, as great as this movie is, the Blu-ray does not do it justice, don’t get me wrong the sound is very good and also very loud but the visuals at times look a little too soft and as with the Blu-Ray of Mad Max 2, doesn’t quite immerse you into the film the way that the DVD version does.

The menu design also is a little clunky with no top menu and only a pop up menu that comes up during the film and returns to it after the extras you select have played, another big letdown is that only a handful of extras from the brilliant 2-disc version on DVD have been ported over, below is a full list of the extras from that version.

Audio Commentary by Director John McTiernan and Production Designer Jackson DeGovia
Scene-Specific Commentary by Special Effects Supervisor Richard Edlund
Text Commentary by Various Cast and Crew Members and Film Historian Eric Licthenfeld
From The Vault:
- Outtakes
---- "The Vault" (2 Audio Options) (6:12)
---- "Turning Off The Power" (3:23)
- 'The Newscasts' (7:58)
- 2 Magazine Articles
The Cutting Room:
- Scene Editing Workshop
- Multi-Camera Shooting
---- Scene R165G (0:24)
---- Scene 167 (1:08)
---- Scene 167A (0:42)
- Audio Mixing
- "Why Letterbox?" featurette (3:22)
- Glossary
Interactive Slide Show (9:26)
The Script
Ad Campaign:
- 3 Theatrical Trailers
- 7 TV Spots (3:37, Note: These are absent on the Australian version of this release)
- 'Making-Of' featurette (7:22)

Here are ones that have been ported over:

Audio Commentary by Director John McTiernan and Production Designer Jackson DeGovia
Scene-Specific Commentary by Special Effects Supervisor Richard Edlund
The Newscasts
Interactive Slide Show
3 Theatrical Trailers
7 TV Spots

And now, the ones that are sadly missing:

Text Commentary by Various Cast and Crew Members and Film Historian Eric Licthenfeld
From The Vault:
- Outtakes
---- "The Vault" (2 Audio Options) (6:12)
---- "Turning Off The Power" (3:23)
- 2 Magazine Articles
The Cutting Room:
- Scene Editing Workshop
- Multi-Camera Shooting
---- Scene R165G (0:24)
---- Scene 167 (1:08)
---- Scene 167A (0:42)
- Audio Mixing
- "Why Letterbox?" featurette (3:22)
- Glossary
'Making-Of' featurette (7:22)

As you can see, this is a little disappointing, especially considering that Blu-Ray could have held all of this stuff no problems but sadly again, Fox will withhold this stuff for a new Blu-Ray edition that has everything from the double disc DVD and essentially pull the same shit they pulled with DVD, pure Fucking Marvelous.

Overall:

Die Hard is a 5 star classic film in every sense of the word but the Blu-Ray edition does very little right and hell of a lot wrong and I can’t help but feel that a better version will come out with everything intact and the disc itself is also just not that great an improvement on the 2-disc DVD version, my advise is too hang on to that and skip this unless you simply have to have it no questions asked.