Good old Ponty has graced us with some Christmas cheer this year with an uproarious and penchant sendup of one of my favorite Christmas movies—and, yes, it is a Christmas movie.

I can’t reveal much more in this intro, so I’ll hand it over to Ponty, who reviews a film that would make Kathleen Kennedy week in the knees:

Christmas is upon us again, my friends. You can’t avoid it. The songs are being played in the supermarkets, the deals are on the shelves and Tina and I recently picked up another compilation of Christmas tunes, sung by the delightful choir of Trinity College, Cambridge. Yep, Yuletide is well and truly here and with the holiday season expected to go into full swing, I thought it might be the time for a movie review to mark the occasion.

Being 2023 and the age of modern enlightenment, I thought I’d bring you something a little different. As many of you know, there have been debates for years over the classic action thriller, Die Hard; is it an action or a Christmas film? For me, it’s both and it seems that modern producers think that way too as they’ve earmarked December for the release of its remake. I know you’re going to say, why? WHY?! Why remake a classic? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Right? Well, modern producers think there’s a lot wrong with the original but hope that they’ve ironed out those mistakes with their hard hitting reimagining, so without further ado, I give you 2023’s Christmas blockbuster, DEI Hard.

To summarise, Holly Gennaro arrives in Los Angeles to pick up her disabled brother, John McClane, who has been working as a janitor at the offices of the Nakatomi Plaza. When she arrives, a Christmas party is underway but she barely has time to lift her high energy, low protein shake to her lips before the party is rudely interrupted by a gang of ruthless mercenaries, intent on stealing the billions in Nakatomi’s near impenetrable vault. Holly escapes and while the police and FBI encircle the building, amid a vast media circus, Holly uses her talents as a cop/former CIA/former Navy seal to outwit the criminals and save the day.

Before I get into the nitty gritty, I must apologise to you, dear reader. Anticipation is so high for this film that no trailer has been released for it. The producers hope that by adapting this ploy, film fans will flock to the cinemas in droves. However, yours Ponty has been given an exclusive, an advanced screening to only a select few, in order to give you, the audience, a taste of things to come. I offer a second apology. I’ve been very slow in bringing you this review, since I wanted to take some time and consider the implications of such a film. Other reviewers, though, were quick out of the traps, with one calling it ‘stunning and brave,’ while another praised its ‘high octane, emotional rollercoaster of a ride, an epic for the ages, a groundbreaking piece of cinema perfection.’ The hyperbole, it seems, is off the charts. I hope you’ll forgive me for slowing things down somewhat.

Holly Gennaro (played by some actress of mixed heritage) is a cut above the rest. The first action heroine since The Hunger Games brought us Katniss Everdeen, but better. No whining, no tears, just a feminine hunk of olive muscle ready to kick some arse and take some names. We see the first signs that she means business when she gets off the plane at the beginning; as she walks down the aisle, an Action Man clutched firmly in her iron grip, she is checked out by the air steward. After making a fuss about indecent patriarchal gestures in an age of feminist empowerment, she headbutts him, brushing her short fringe away from her eyes, as she leaves the aircraft to applause. Now that’s cinema gold, right there!

Astute reader as you are, you’ll have already noticed the major change from the original. 2023’s version doesn’t give us the wisecracking, gun toting John McClane but his wife instead. They’ve also changed the relationship, Holly and John are sister and brother. The producers no doubt believed that the gender swap was right and proper and that a career woman should also be front and centre in the action genre. The Holly Gennaro you remember – long bushy hair, power suit, but still feminine – looks much different, too. Her hair is cut short, her body tight, skinny but muscly, her complexion somewhat darker than the Holly we came to love in the originals. One reviewer noted that it may have been a man but that was quickly rubbished, the reviewer in question asked to find employment elsewhere. No, this is a woman for the modern age; sleek, no nonsense, and no need to be saddled by any man.

Poor John McClane is relegated to a minor role in this version, pretty much like the guy who played the janitor in the second movie of the original franchise. Rather than be respected as a go it alone hero, his character appears every so often in this film as one to be pitied, rather than revered. We never find out how he got the job at Nakotomi or how he is special needs (an explainer in a conversation between Holly and the limo driver, Arlene, at the beginning intimates that he was accidentally-on-purpose dropped on his head when he was a child) and as the antagonists find out much later in the film, McClane’s use as a bargaining chip to rope in Holly is pretty useless since John has no idea what is going on. He swings his mop and utters inane dialogue – ‘Yipkee, mother, Yipkee, mother!’ – but no one has any idea what he’s talking about. His inanities earn him a pat on the head and ‘yes, dear.’

Another noticeable change is seen in the bad guys. These aren’t German mercenaries and there are no ethnically diverse members in the team. In a short write up from the production company, given to the reviewers before we watched the film, we were politely informed that ‘Germans were victims not perpetrators of both World Wars and unhelpful stereotypes, like that perpetuated in the original, do not aid our values in this new progressive society.’ With that in mind, Hans Gruber and his bunch of deplorables have been replaced with a mixture of white English and Americans. The leader himself, Don Farage, hasn’t the style or wit carried so superbly by Alan Rickman in the original but is seen as low grade, the sort who would rather tell off colour jokes than compliment a man on his suit.

The action scenes are a little weak, too. By comparison, in the original, we could see the struggle McClane faced as he whittled down Gruber’s men. There was that excruciating scene where he pulled glass from his feet. He spent as much time running as taking out Gruber’s men. All of that is dispensed with here, mainly because Gennaro possesses skills and abilities unknown to most action heroes. In one scene, one of Farage’s thugs corners her in an unused office – ‘come out, love, we won’t ‘urt ya…much’ – and she knocks him down in a surprising attack, with a back kick, somersault, roundhouse movement that he could do little about, before decapitating him with a letter opener. As the body falls out of sight, “Sister’s Are Doin’ It For Themselves” plays as Holly gyrates for the camera for a few moments before rushing off to find the next bad guy. In fact, this annoying ploy plays for each of the bad guys she takes down; she horsewhips one guy with his own belt, which she claims he probably used on his wife, before waving her skinny arms in musical harmony and then rushing off again.

We still see minor characters like Dick Thornberg, Al Powell and Dwayne T. Robinson. Powell still has his backstory on how he won’t fire his gun, Thornberg is still an arsehole with dubious intent, and Robinson remains an inept cop way in over his head. Much of the original plot remains the same but the film time is dramatically cut by the success in which Holly removes Farage’s men. The only time we see her out of breath is when she chucks Farage off the building and her brother jumps after him – ‘weeeeeee’ – Holly, reaching out to catch her brother and pull him back up. Otherwise, it’s pretty much plain sailing and as the credits roll after little under an hour, Gennaro strolling out of the building to power pose for the cameras, her brother sucking on a lollipop, we click down our pens and get ready to leave the small cinema, while some stand to attention to applaud this film for modern times.

My assessment is that this movie wanted the audience to pay close attention to female empowerment. Minor roles in the original became practically nonexistent in this film, though the filmmakers were oddly insistent on giving us an insight into their thinking – the Christmas party adorned with Pride colours, no smoking nor alcohol on display, the language altered so that no one but conservatives and white men are offended. And do you know? It would have been good to see Holly struggle as McClane did in the original, but I guess Holly’s labours would have to appear off camera, in the real world, where crimes like the gender pay gap were happening.

I never got the impression in the original that Holly was put upon. In fact, she seemed to be rather making a success out of her life, apart from her husband. When the Nakatomi is taken over, Holly remains strong even after her boss is killed. She keeps her colleagues calm as chaos envelops around them, even throwing out the odd jibe when she’s around Gruber. Die Hard wasn’t about McClane saving Holly, he was saving everyone in that building so, to me, seeing Holly changed into this cold and distant heroine and John diminished was a little difficult to swallow.

The film has already received critical acclaim with reviewers giving it an unprecedented 6/5 rating and the Oscars, after conversations with producers, writers and actors alike, have decided that their 2024 ceremony will be a dedication to the hard work of the DEI Hard community. Reporters also predict that by the time the event takes place, the film will have taken $324 at the box office. If that isn’t success, I don’t know what is.

Personally, I’d advise you to stick to the original but hey, what do I know? Grab your chickpea popcorn, pour yourself a non fat, low cal, non alcoholic cocktail, and get watching. Yule love it!