The DU Lounge

1. A proper Christmas movie is set during the Christmas season. While there are a few films that are considered Christmas movies but are not set at Christmastime, like The Sound of Music, a Christmas movie is generally set during the season. Die Hard, and at least one of its sequels, is set during Christmastime.

2. The accoutrements of Christmas, like decorations and Christmas parties, should be present. Die Hard is the story of a Christmas movie gone extremely wrong.

3. There should be a family conflict that resolves itself by the end of the movie. In Die Hard, New York City Police officer John McClane's wife had moved to Los Angeles for work, and tensions are high in the McClane family because of it.

4. A character should have some personal demons he or she gets rid of by the end of the movie. Serving as the distant end of John's radio calls is Sergeant Al Powell, who works a desk because he shot a kid during an incident and can't bring himself to pull his gun when necessary.

5. There should be a villain. Die Hard has three: the declared villain Hans Gruber, the TV news guy Dick Thornburgh, and Deputy Chief Dwayne Robinson. Quite frankly, Hans Gruber is the least odious of the three.

6. There needs to be a situation that suspends belief. Die Hard has a few. First is PG&E's need to take out a huge block of the city's power grid to cut the lights in Nakatomi Tower. You mean they can't just go over there and pull the meter head? Second is the FBI's theory that if they cut power to Nakatomi Tower it'll kill the lights inside; any commercial building has emergency lights that are powered by batteries for just such an occasion. Third, the vault? Lemme ask you something: if you were going to break into a Super High Tech Vault like Nakatomi had, would you spend hours trying to defeat the "seven seals" that it has or would you just walk in with a firefighter's breaching saw and cut a hole in the door? Sometimes the most efficient solution is brute force and ignorance.

7. There should be a character placed for comic relief. Argyle the Limo Driver is the man of Condition 7.