On the Third Day of Die Hard, My True Love Gave To Me...

Kids are usually not the focus of a Die HardThe 1980s were famous for the bombastic action films released during the decade. Featuring big burly men fighting other big burly men, often with more guns, bombs, and explosions than appear in Michael Bay's wildest dreams, the action films of the decade were heavy on spectacle, short on realism. And then came a little film called Die Hard that flipped the entire action genre on its head.. When we look at the formula – a lone hero battling terrorists while they try to steal something, all of which happens in a single, central location – we tend to expect an adult to be the central hero of the story. Sure, I’ve included Home Alone in my list of Die Hard style films, but even I will admit it was a bit of a stretch to get us there. The last act of the Home Alone films is where the most Die Hard-like action takes place, but each of those movies needs a lot of setup to get to the final, big, action-filled climax. Before then we just have a lot of faffing around, all because no one wants to see kids murder terrorists.

Or so you’d think. But then along comes Becky, a film that very much tries to prove that a kid can pull a Die Hard just as well as any adult. Released in 2020, Becky is about as far from a Home Alone scenario as you can get. It feels like it’s going to go that route, with the young character having a fight with her dad, which leads one to think we’ll see them learn some lessons, do a bit of caring and sharing, and then maybe fight some bad guys in the last act before they learn the true spirit of… something. But that is not how this movie goes.

Becky, as it turns out, goes hard. This is a brutal, violent, and very bloody movie that earns its hard R-rating in spades. Its heroine is not cut from the same mold as Kevin McCallister. Hell, she’ll chew up and spit out Kevin before he even had a chance to enable any of his traps. This little girl is one mean bitch, and the film, dark and nasty as it is, revels in letting her find her violent rage and use it against all the bad guys that come for her family. This film winds itself up and then unleashes, and audiences get to go along for one brutal ride after.

The Becky in Becky is played by Lulu Wilson, a girl riding pretty hard on the edge. Her mother died only a year before, losing her fight with cancer, and Becky has been struggling ever since. Her happy life was shattered, and she’s been unable to move on. Her father, Jeff (Joel McHale), has moved on, though, finding love with a new woman, Kayla (Amanda Brugel). Taking Becky to their lake house, Jeff springs the news on his daughter that he and Kayla were engaged, meaning Becky would soon have a new step-mother. This conversation goes poorly.

Becky storms off, running off into the woods to hide in her fort, but while Jeff searches for her, a man comes to the door of the lake house and Kayla lets them in. He says he’s there to find his missing dog, but once Jeff comes back the man, Dominick (Kevin James), gets violent. In reality he’s a neo-nazi, there to find a key he left in the house’s basement (presumably before the house was sold to Jeff and his family). But Becky at some point found that key and has it stashed in her fort. Dominick wants it, and he’ll do anything to get it, including torturing and murdering everything else at the lake house. And this is what breaks Becky, leading her to unleash all her rage and violence on these very bad, very evil men.

Becky does not pull any punches. When the girl sets her sights on someone she rains down absolute violence upon them. Her kills are brutal and bloody, with the girl using things she has quick access to, from broken rulers and colored pencils to, later, power tools, all to do as much damage as she can. This is not a girl that fears violence. She welcomes it, relishes it. She wants to hurt and destroy everyone in front of her just so she can work through all the rage she’s been sitting on for the last year. These men give her the outlet, and the movie watches as she becomes quite the little murder machine.

It’s a lot. It’s very bloody and quite gory. I honestly think there are plenty in the audience that wouldn’t enjoy quite the extremes Becky goes to in her quest for vengeance and catharsis. It’s not quite torture porn, but it definitely rides that line, and there are some sequences that feel pretty brutal even for someone like me that is deep into the gorier horror scene. Becky does damage, to a level that would make John McClane squeamish (and would make Kevin McCallister hide in the attic until his parents came home).

Not that you really feel bad for the guys she’s going up against. The film sets it up pretty early that these are very bad men. Dominick is a neo-nazi, and we in the audience certainly wouldn’t have much sympathy for him at all (or, at least, we shouldn’t). He’s someone that willingly kills innocents, including children, just to get what he wants. And the fact the key leads to some treasure that will let him push his neo-nazi agenda and, somehow, bring about a new era (this is all not really explained, and it doesn’t need to be for the movie to work) gives us all we need to root against him no matter the level of violence coming towards him and his men.

What’s interesting is that the film early on draws a very striking parallel between Dominick and Becky. We see each of them going about their lives, him in prison (before he escapes) and her in school, and it’s clear these are two sides of the same coin. The film wants us to know she’s as dark and twisted as he is, in her own way, and it makes it clear that when these two go head to head it’ll be a meeting of equals. He might be bigger and stronger than she is, but she has it in her to be the bigger monster, if she wants. And she does, as we soon see.

The actors definitely deserve credit for making their characters work. I’ve not seen Kevin James play a character like this before, as I mostly know him from the various sitcoms and goofy comedies he’s done. Dominick is way outside his normal wheelhouse and James plays the character really well, dark and evil in the right measure. But then Wilson, only 15 at the time, is able to make Becky both a relatable teen and a troubled youth struggling with her anger. She rises to the occasion and is a heavy up against James’s heavy, and it all works. This is an antagonistic duo that shouldn’t feel balanced, and yet it does.

Becky is a tight, tense, angry little bit of action violence, and it works. It worked well enough to make over $1 Mil at the Box Office on a tiny budget, prompting a sequel, The Wrath of Becky, three years later. It’s a very solid, very violent little Die Hard style movie, one that fans of the genre likely would enjoy. But it’s also quite different, being harder, angrier, and gorier than your typical Die Hard style movie. It’s not for everyone, but if you can get into the beats of the movie (and if you don’t mind bloody violence) then this one absolutely had its charms.