DIE HARD breakdown - Sequence 2
Screenwriting Tricks for Authors
I’ve added to Sequence 1, so you’ll want to read that over again before reading this one. Just so much to talk about in this movie, I can’t help myself. Start with these two posts to catch up!
Die Hard, Sequence 1 Breakdown
Die Hard, SEQUENCE 2
The action of Sequence 2 is non-stop, with lots of quick cuts between locations and characters, all in real time.
Starting just before 19 minutes in:
In the guard office, Theo finishes his security lockdown and then destroys the equipment around him with karate kicks and lots of electrical flashes.
19 min. The elevator doors open and Gruber steps out into the lobby, surrounded by his armed men.
The henchmen peel off as Gruber steps to the glass front doors to scan the outside, then uses a key card to lock the doors. One henchman puts on a guard uniform and sits at the desk. Gruber doesn’t even have to say anything to the men – a nod across the room is all the direction he has to give. (POWER OF THE VILLAIN). His toss of the key card across the room to one of his minions is a perfect and elegant arc.
Cut to another floor, where another henchman, TONY: very young, Nordic, bespectacled, nervous, walks down a very white and narrow corridor, giving himself directions in German. (One thing to note throughout is the brilliant SET DESIGN – which consistently creates a completely different-looking space for each scene). In a stairwell, Tony quite impressively slides down the railing on his elbows to the next floor. In that service corridor, he uses a power tool to slice open a panel and access a tangle of cables. (SPECIAL SKILLS OF HENCHMAN). We don’t know this yet, but this is Karl’s brother. The similar, near-white blond hair is a pretty good hint.
21:07 We find John still in Holly’s office, making fists with his toes on the carpet. To his surprise, it actually works. This is a PAYOFF to the weird suggestion of his seatmate on the plane; a bit of COMIC RELIEF to break up the tension of the invasion of the building by the villains; and also, crucially, it gives John a huge VULNERABILITY (or WEAKNESS, or ACHILLES HEEL), for the battle to come: He is running around barefoot for the rest of the movie.
John looks at the photos of his family in his wallet and pauses on the same photo that Holly has in her office (underscoring the BOND between them). He finds Argyle’s card and calls him – Argyle is in the parking lot, chilling in the back seat with John’s bear, music blasting. (Comic moment).
Tony is still going through the cables meticulously cutting one phone line at a time. Karl comes in and just fires up a chainsaw and cuts through the whole lot of them while Tony shouts at him. Again, the filmmakers set up clear distinctions between henchmen, and create more suspense and tension by having conflict between secondary opponents. Also, Karl is clearly both volatile and violent, possibly crazy. Not good news for John.
On the phone, John is about to tell Argyle that he can go, John is set for the night —when the phone line goes dead as Karl saws through the phone cables.
23:00 — Gruber’s gang enters the party with machine guns. (With the string quartet still playing Ode to Joy.)
In the office, John hears gunfire and screaming outside. He reacts instantly, grabbing his own gun and running out into the hall, where he hides in a stairwell to assess the situation. He watches as the gang rounds up all the guests and forces them into the main room. There’s an exploitive, thankfully brief moment as some henchmen burst in on the couple seen before, having sex in the office, and wrest the half-naked woman off the desk. This, combined with the Clockwork Orange reference, is an ugly suggestion that the women hostages are in danger of rape. The movie never goes there — but the all-male filmmakers apparently felt the need to tease it.
Karl and another henchman check the office where John was an instant ago, but it’s empty.
Cut to John running up the stairs in bare feet, clutching his gun. He opens the door of the 31st floor, but he glimpses another henchman pushing a cart full of equipment and quickly shuts the door.
Gruber’s gang herds the stragglers into the center of the main room.
John runs further upstairs and finds an eerie, empty floor, under construction (beautiful set design, again creating a completely different looking space for this scene.) He checks it out, leading with his gun (SPECIAL SKILLS of Hero), then tries the phone, but that phone is dead, too. He slams the phone down and tells himself “Think. Think.” Then he looks out and sees a light on in a nearby building – he can look down into the apartment, where a gorgeous woman in her underwear seems to be getting ready for bed. Which - I guess - is not meant to portray John as a Peeping Tom, but is supposedly to remind him that Holly is in the building, and vulnerable, but it’s a bizarre and gratuitous way to do that. What do you think?
25 min. — In the party room, a henchman fires a shot to get the hostages’ attention, and Gruber steps up to address the hostages. Note that Gruber is on a set of steps that look like a stage, with a stone pillar behind him, holding a book open like a bible — very much the image of a preacher in on a dais in front of a congregation. He reads very formally from the book: “Due to the Nakatomi Company’s legacy of greed they are about to be taught a lesson in the real use of power. You will be witnesses.” It all sounds like a terrorist abduction, that there will be a ransom demand. (SET UP).
Gruber shuts the book and says, “Now. Where is Mr. Takagi?” In the crowd of hostages, Holly surreptitiously touches Takagi’s arm to stop him from answering. (Showing Holly is thinking, anticipating, beginning to plan – SPECIAL SKILLS). In the silence, Gruber walks through the crowd with suave menace, reciting Takagi’s whole biography from memory (VILLAIN’S SKILLS – intelligence and a precise memory, and at the same time a hypnotic control.).
Gruber continues his recitation, stopping ominously in front of each Japanese man in the crowd, and also looking over Ellis with contempt. SUSPENSE AND FEAR. Takagi finally puts a stop to the intimidation by stepping forward: “Enough. I am Takagi.” Gruber tells him smoothly, “How do you do? It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Then Karl takes Takagi roughly out of the room. There is a moment between Holly and Gruber as Holly eyes him balefully, afraid, but defiant.
In the stairwell, John opens another door on another floor, sees an empty office, continues to climb stairs, muttering what Takagi told him earlier: “Thirty-three floors under construction.” (He pays attention and also has a good memory, like Gruber.)
With Takagi and Karl in the only working elevator, Gruber cheerfully hums Ode to Joy, then remarks on the quality of Takagi’s suit. Gruber has two by the same designer himself. (Villain’s DESIRE is for wealth and luxury).
In the stairwell, John opens yet another door to see a group of henchmen pushing another cart (or the same cart?) of what he can now see are explosives.
On another floor, Gruber and Karl walk Takagi into a board room passing through several models of the Nakatomi Corporation’s planned development, including one of the tower they are in (a META moment that can be effective but if you ask me is overused in film. There was a model like this in the recent Heretic - it was one half of a good movie). Gruber quotes “When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.” And then explains, “The benefits of a classical education.” He continues: “I always enjoyed to make models as a boy, the exactness, the attention to every conceivable detail. Obviously these are more of his SKILLS, but this is a nice moment of making the antagonist’s inner life visible and concrete, rather than the character just dumping a load of exposition about it.) 28 minutes.
Note how the writers have designed Gruber as the polar opposite of John McLane: He is elegant, impeccably and fashionably dressed, precise, exacting, classically educated, European (American movies love to portray villains as European or English) — in complete contrast to scruffy, off-the-cuff, blue-collar man of the people McLane.
Heightening the differences between your protagonist and antagonist is a great technique to increase dramatic tension.
Also note that American McLane’s opponents are German (Gruber and his brutal henchmen) and Japanese (the Nakatomi corporation is interfering in John’s marriage). These are the Axis enemies that the US fought in World War II. That would have had more resonance in the 1980’s. We’re having to deal with other villains, now.
Gruber tells Takagi, “My associate has some questions for you. Fill in the blanks questions, actually.” He ushers Takagi into a glassed-in inner office, where Theo is waiting in front of a computer. Karl and Tony lurk behind.
Takagi is shocked to learn the group broke in to access the company’s computer system and that Gruber is not interested in the information inside the computer. What he wants is the code to the computer so he can break into the vault, which contains $640 million in negotiable bearer bonds. The computer controls the vault. (TWIST, VILLAIN’S TRUE DESIRE and PLAN).
Takagi stares at him. “You want money? What kind of terrorists are you?” Gruber laughs. “Who said we were terrorists?”
Cut to John, commando crawling across the floor of the outer room past the models, toward the board room where he can see Takagi and the villains.
Gruber threatens Takagi for the code. “It’s a very nice suit, Mr. Takagi. It would be a shame to ruin it.”
Takagi again denies that he knows the code: "I'm telling you, you're just going to have to kill me."
"OK," Gruber says, and shoots him in the head, splattering blood all over the window behind him. 31:30
It’s a shocking moment for the swiftness and casualness of Gruber’s response, and a reveal of the TRUE NATURE OF THE VILLAIN. Under all that elegance is a cold-blooded sociopath.
John starts to back quickly out of the office but makes a noise, alerting Karl to his presence. Karl and Tony run out in pursuit but John is crouched, hidden. (SUSPENSE, JEOPARDY).
Karl and Tony return to the board room, where Gruber orders Theo to break the code.
In his hiding place, John mutters, “Argyle, please tell me you heard the shots and called the police.” Cut to Argyle still in the back of the limo with the bear, chatting up a woman on the phone as music blasts. Oblivious. No help coming from there.
CLIMAX OF SEQUENCE 2, at 32:40
We’ll continue this. But here’s a pro question for those following along: was the Climax of Sequence 2 also the Climax of Act I— or is there a third sequence in the first Act? Hmmm….
Alex
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