He doesn’t act on impulse. He doesn’t panic. And yes, when push comes to shove, he can talk his way out of almost any situation.
Case in point, when he goes to look for the detonators he stumbles upon the very man that has been thwarting his plan from the get-go, John McClane. With his gun just out of reach, accompanied by the knowledge that McClane has likely never seen his face, he offers a brilliant performance to cover his tracks, if only for a moment.
When he’s stuck in a gunfight, he remembers that McClane has no shoes on. “Better than being caught with your pants down,” he remembers McClane quipping. So what does Hans do? He tells Karl to “shoot the glass.”
These are just a couple of examples of how calculating this brilliant villain really is, and it makes the story even more interesting because we wonder how the hero will ever match up to such a calculating foe.
