The Salina Journal from Salina, Kansas • Page 47

A The Salind Journal Entertainment: 23 1 1: Sunday, July 24,.1988... 7.. 1 1 tIEr gl 2: Willis' Die Hard' is stupid, By CARYN JAMES N.Y. Times News Service "Die Hard," the. movie that gambles a $5 million salary on Bruce Willis, has to.

be the most excessive film around. It piles every known element of the action genre onto. the flimsy story of a New York I Review cop who. rescues hostages from a Los Angeles office tower on Christmas Eve. Partly an interracial buddy movie, partly the sentimental tale of a ruptured marriage, the film is largely a special-effects carnival full of machine-gun fire, roaring helicopters and an exploding tank.

It also has a villain fresh from the Royal Shakespeare Company, a thug from the Bolshoi Ballet and a hero who carries with him the smirks and wisecracks that helped but escapist so there is plenty of time for McClane to play hero. Willis' true expertise is in banter, so the director, John McTiernan, shrewdly blends bursts of action with comic dial- ogue. McClane races up and down elevator shafts. He kills one terrorist, taking his machine gun and citizens' band radio. Now he can have a running conversation with Al, the sympathetic black cop who arrives first at the scene.

Al (played by Reginald Veljohnson) becomes part of the only buddy film where the friends don't meet until the story is over. Meanwhile, back in the executive suite, there is Hans, the ruthless terrorist leader in a very welltailored suit. He is the film's best surprise, played by Alan Rickman, who was recently the seductive, manipulative Valmont in the Royal Shakespeare Com- The Dead Pool' lacks energy of 'Dirty Harry' films 6 REASONS TO CATCH FOX SUNDAY NIGHT AMERICA! MOST WANTED MARRIED WITH CHILDREN 7.00 7:30 DUET 8:30 9:00 KAS-TU 18 Salina .1.1.4, fun make "Moonlighting" a television hit. The strange thing is, it works: "Die Hard" is exceedingly stupid, but escapist fun. The film's producers and director also were responsible for the Arnold Schwarzenegger hit "Predator." Here they graft the Schwarzenegger-style comic hero onto Willis' boyish, mischievous "Moonlighting" persona, and send this new creature sauntering into "The Towering Inferno." There is a slow half-hour at the start, when John McClane (Willis) lands in Los Angeles to visit his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia) and goes to her office Christmas party.

Minutes later, a group of terrorists shows up, planning to steal $6 million in bonds. The terrorists have to crack a difficult computer code before getting into the vault, their own supposedly righteous sort of bloodletting from that of slasher films. At times it looks as though "'The Dead Pool" was designed to be the first big film for the Tipper Gore era. But at other times it seems to support Swan's notion that bloody In "License Revoked," Bond is cashiered by the British Secret Service as he becomes embroiled in a personal mission of vengeance. The Hamlet-like role should be a cinch for Dalton, a Shakespearean actor whose stage credits include "Antony and Cleopatra" and "Taming of the Shrew." Classified ads get results.

J. pany's stage production of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." Here, he' makes Hans a perfect snake. "Who are you?" he. superciliously asks McClane via radio. "Are you just another American who saw too many movies as a child?" Well, yes, he did.

McClane is a movie maverick, who asks to be called Roy, because he liked Roy Rogers' fancy shirts. Here, he walks around in a sleeveless undershirt, a tattoo on his left bicep, getting sweatier and dirtier and bloodier by the minute. A great part of the film's appeal is in watching the down-and-dirty cop match wits with the aloof master criminal: The film makers even have the wit to play the "Ode to Joy" when Hans finally walks into the opened vault. "Die Hard" has more than its share of bloody moments and blasted bodies. Bruce Willis, star, of ABC's "Moonlighting," plays a New York cop in "Die Hard." By MICHAEL SRAGOW San Francisco Examiner For Scripps Howard News Service About the only thing that connects the tiresome, jokey "The Dead Pool" to the other Dirty Harry movies is the way Clint Eastwood stalks through it like a glowering inferno, with his face in a pinched scowl.

The uninitiated viewer may well wonder, "Why is Review this man scowling?" In "The Dead Pool," the usual pile of corpses isn't all that's coming up roses for Lt. Harry Callahan. He's now the darling of the San Francisco Police Department. The movie opens when he's just managed to put away a local mob chief, and after he guns down a handful of the" chief's assassins, his biggest problem is his celebrity status. Journalists clamor to tell his story.

What's worse, a -horror-movie director named Peter Swan (Liam Neeson) uses Callahan's name in a game called The Dead Pool, in which the players make lists of celebrities apt to die within the year. The people, who make Swan's list die at an alarming rate. "The Dead Pool" isn't a mystery; there's no way to guess the identity of the murderer. As an action film it consists of glorifying Harry, the lone man with a gun, as he manages to outshoot three or four guys at a time, some of whom tote submachine guns. It doesn't have the reactionary energy of the first Dirty Harry films and it even pokes fun at Harry's triggerhappiness when he draws on autograph-seekers at a restaurant.

Harry gets downright palsywalsy with his new partner, a Chinese-American named Quan (Evan Kim), who's as swift with his lethal limbs as Harry is with his firearms. He gets even cozier with a female TV news reporter, Samantha: Walker (Patricia Clarkson). Where are the foes of yesteryear? There's no Zodiac-type killer in "The Dead the villain is either the obnoxious director Swan, or some homicidal maniac who wants to be just like him. Along with a feeble parody of satanic. rock videos, the horrormovie settings give the moviemakers the chance to distinguish Dalton to film new Bond movie BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.

(AP) Filming of the latest James Bond movie, "License Revoked," starring actor Timothy Dalton in a reprise role, has begun in Mexico City. Dalton, 42, is cast as the suave British secret agent opposite Robert Davi, who plays a tyrannical Latin American drug lord. Cast as femme fatales are Carey Lowell and Talisa Soto. films offer an audience release from its fears especially when Harry slays the murderer with one of Swan's garish prop harpoons. There's one clever sequence featuring a remake of the "Bullitt" car chase with a remote controlled toy.

And that's it. Director Buddy Van Horn started out as a stunt coordinator. Van Horn is as clumsy as Burt Reynolds' stunt man-turned director, Hal Needham. Like Needham's "'Cannonball Run" movies, Van Horn's Dirty Harry film is destined for drive-in.