Bruce Willis still Dies Hard in 1988 action thriller

Die Hard. Bruce Willis’s unheralded 1988 action thriller revolutionised the genre.

Bruce Willis in the 1988 film Die Hard

Once every generation or so, a movie comes along that changes the way Hollywood thinks. Most recently the multiplexes are in the midst of an onslaught of superhero movies, but in 1988 the film that revolutionised the action genre was an unheralded thriller called Die Hard (Sunday, 9.30pm, One). In only his third starring role, Bruce Willis commands the screen as a New York police detective visiting his estranged wife in Los Angeles who becomes involved with a dozen terrorists attempting to take over a hi-tech skyscraper. Alan Rickman makes his big-screen debut as the German bad guy, the action is imaginative and fast, and Michael Kamen’s rousing score retools Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for the popcorn crowd.

A more recent genre triumph of the homegrown variety is writer-director Ivan Sen’s sturdy 2013 procedural Mystery Road (Sunday, 10.30pm, ABC). Aaron Pedersen plays an indigenous detective who returns to his remote outback town after a stint in Sydney, only to confront institutional racism as he methodically tracks down the murderer of a teenage girl. Deceptively low-key, the film thrums with intrigue and character development and pays off spectacularly in a nearly wordless climactic shootout on the weather-beaten title path.

The rare sequel that is almost as cherished as the original, the 1993 hit comedy Wayne’s World 2 (Thursday, 9pm, One) once again stars Mike Myers and Dana Carvey as Wayne and Garth, the genial hosts of the Illinois-based low-budget cable TV show. This is the film with Christopher Walken as a record producer, Aerosmith playing themselves as headliners of a concert dubbed “Waynestock”, and spoofs of everything from Jurassic Park to Thelma & Louise.

Director Jonathan Demme’s 2004 remake of John Frankenheimer’s landmark 1962 Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate (Monday, 10.30pm, One) is co-produced by Tina Sinatra (whose father Frank starred in the original and famously kept the film out of distribution for decades after the Kennedy assassination). Denzel Washington steps into Sinatra’s role, this time as a Gulf War veteran who discovers a vast corporate plot centred on the political ambitions of a former member of his unit (Liev Schreiber). Working with long-time cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, Demme successfully teases maximum tension from the revamped premise. The excellent supporting cast includes Jon Voight and Meryl Streep.

And speaking of corporate malfeasance, the week also offers a rare airing of director Donald Crombie’s 1981 Sydney-based thriller The Killing of Angel Street (Tuesday, 12.20am, ABC). It is, of course, the fictionalised telling of the disappearance of Juanita Nielsen, whose late 1970s activism against urban development ran her afoul of big-business interests.

Die Hard (M)

4.5 stars

Sunday, 9.30pm, One

Mystery Road (M)

4.5 stars

Sunday, 10.30pm, ABC

The Killing of Angel Street (M)

4 stars

Tuesday, 12.20am, ABC