John McClane

In honor of the upcoming winter break, this week's badass award goes to the main character of my favorite holiday movie of all time:  Die Hard.

John McClane is a hardass NYPD detective visiting L.A. for Christmas to see his kids and rekindle the strained long-distance relationship he has with his wife.  When he gets into town, he gets suckered into going to this lame ass holiday party on the thirtieth floor of the Nakatomi Building downtown and hanging out with his wife's dipshit co-workers.  Just when things are looking really boring - BAM! - Alan Rickman and his gang of fucking East German terrorists take control of the building and start fucking shit up big time.  Well John McClane isn't the kind of guy who's going to sit around like a pussy and wait for the cops to rescue him, so he starts running around the building breaking peoples' necks, throwing dead bodies at cop cars and shooting terrorists in the balls. 

When McClane isn't smoking cigarettes, crawling through ventilation ducts, running through broken glass barefoot, blowing shit up or getting into fistfights with guys that look like a mix between Ivan Drago and Fabio, he's on the two-way radio talking shit to Alan Rickman and pissing him off.  It's pretty fucking funny too, because John McClane is one of the few movie badasses that can get away with a bunch of sarcastic one-liners without sounding like some corny lame-ass chump James Bond motherfucker.  It's probably his copious use of swearing and the phrase "Yippie kai yay, motherfucker", but I can't swear to that.

Anyways, Alan Rickman gets all pissed off and decides to capture McClane's wife and hold her hostage.  Big mistake.  McClane gets so fucking ripshit that he takes the last two bullets out of his MP5, puts them into his 92F and then puts them into the last two terrorists' brains with a couple of STONE COLD quick-draw shots.  You gotta love a guy who makes sure to use every last bit of his available ammunition to kill motherfuckers.  It takes more than that to defeat Alan Rickman though, so McClane throws his ass out the window of the building's 30th floor and watches him plummet to his death in super slow-motion.

Die Hard has everything.  It's got a crazy-ass limo driver, the Principal from the Breakfast Club, exploding FBI helicopters, guys getting shot in the head and chicks punching asshole reporters in the face.  Oh, not to mention that it features one of the most badass cops to ever grace the silver screen murdering a shitload of terrorists, getting the girl and helping a former beat cop overcome his traumatizing past.  Seriously, is there any scene in movie history more likely to make a real manshed a tiny tear then the end of Die Hard when Carl Winslow finally overcomes his fear of shooting kids and puts six rounds into Karl the Terrorist?  It's doubtful.  Die Hard kicks ass.

Man I love the holidays.