To most of the younger crowd Alan Rickman is Professor Snape, but for me and those who remember when action movies didn't have to be loud and dumb, Rickman will always be Hans Gruber. Rickman turns 64 today allowing me to lament a bit about he has never been nominated for an Oscar. Rickman's Gruber is the villain that all other action villains are compared to. He's sophistacated, smart, cunning with a touch of charm as well, a perfect foil for the everyman of Bruce Willis. In many ways Gruber epiotmized the more modern or 80's version of man with his fancy suit, with Willis symbolizing the mythos of the western man. Die Hard hardly gets credited for mirroring a Western, but it has a robbery, a damsel in distress, the unknown hero and hey it even takes place in the West. I could go on and on about the masculine symbolism in this movie (the really really tall building), but instead I'll just finish with a lament regarding how this movie spawned mostly thankless rip-offs. A few action movies of the 90's work, but none could equal Die Hard.
To me, he will always be Most Awesome Angel From Dogma.
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