Die Hard

This article is about the 1988 action film. For other uses, see die hard.

Die Hard
Directed by	John McTiernan
Written by	Novel Roderick Thorp Screenplay Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza
Produced by	Lawrence Gordon Joel Silver Charles Gordon (executive producer) Beau Marks (associate producer)
Starring	Bruce Willis Alan Rickman Bonnie Bedelia Alexander Godunov Reginald VelJohnson Paul Gleason
Cinematography	Jan de Bont
Edited by	John F. Link Frank J. Urioste
Music by	Michael Kamen, Chris Boardman (uncredited)
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release dates	July 15, 1988
Running time	131 min.
Country	USA
Languages	English, German
Budget	$28,000,000 (est.)

Die Hard is a Hollywood action film released in 1988. It was written by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, stars Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, Alan Rickman, Reginald VelJohnson, and William Atherton, and was directed by John McTiernan. A huge critical and commercial success, Die Hard propelled Willis' film career and established Rickman as a popular portrayer of villains in American film.

The movie is based on a 1979 novel by Roderick Thorp titled Nothing Lasts Forever, itself a sequel to the book The Detective, which was previously made into a 1968 movie starring Frank Sinatra.

Plot

On December 24, 1988, John McClane, a detective with the NYPD, arrives in Los Angeles to attempt a Christmas reunion with his estranged wife Holly. He is taken by limousine driver Argyle to her workplace, the highrise Nakatomi Towers. Joining the Nakitomi Christmas party, McClane finally finds Holly and they immediately get into an argument over her use of her maiden name Gennaro. Holly leaves McClane in a small room near the party.

A gang led by the German terrorist Hans Gruber invades and secures the building, under the pretense of wishing to secure the release of various terrorist operatives. The party-goers are subdued and it is revealed that the group are really thieves who plan to steal millions of dollars in bearer bonds from the building's security vault. When Holly's boss Takagi refuses to provide the vault combination, he is killed and Theo, the gang's technical mastermind, begins disabling the sequential vault locks.

McClane manages to slip away during the round-up of the party-goers, albeit without his shoes, as he was in the bathroom at the time of the takeover. His attempt to summon help via the building's fire alarm brings him into confrontation with a gang member named Tony. He kills Tony, prompting the man's vengeful brother Karl to lead a hunt for the policeman through the building. McClane secures the attention of patrolling LAPD officer Al Powell by dropping the body of one of his pursuers onto the hood of the officer's car.

Nakatomi Plaza (in real life, the Fox Plaza).

The LAPD and the FBI respond in force, but this merely accelerates Gruber's original timetable. McClane continues his fight from within, picking off gang-members one by one, with Powell as his only ally outside the building. After McClane captures Gruber's vital supply of explosive detonators, Gruber finds himself in an unexpected face-to-face confrontation with the detective; the mastermind's attempt at pretending to be an escaped hostage is successful enough to lead to the recovery of the detonators and the injuring of McClane's bare feet. Back outside the building, an irresponsible TV reporter named Richard Thornburg accidentally alerts Gruber to the fact that Holly is McClane's wife. He takes her aside as a special hostage.

McClane realizes that Gruber's plan is to blow up the hostages on the roof of the building, covering the gang's escape. McClane gets the hostages back off the roof, but Gruber still sets off the explosion. McClane escapes the blast by jumping over the side of the building with a fire hose around his waist and shooting his way in through a window a couple of stories down. Meanwhile, thanks to the FBI turning off the building's power, the vault's last lock opens, but when Theo goes to the building's parking garage to prepare the gang's getaway ambulance, Argyle rams the vehicle with his limousine and knocks Theo unconscious.

McClane confronts Gruber one last time high up in the tower, with Holly being held at gunpoint. McClane tricks Gruber with a faked surrender and shoots the villian, who falls to his death. As McClane and his wife leave the building, the seemingly-indestructible Karl reappears one last time. He is gunned down by Powell, who had earlier confided to McClane that mistakenly shooting and killing a teenager had rendered him emotionally unable to draw his gun. Holly and John are approached by Thornburg, still relentlessly angling for a fresh scoop. Holly punches the reporter and the couple departs the scene in Argyle's battered limo.

Cast

Actor	Role
Bruce Willis	Detective John McClane
Alan Rickman	Hans Gruber
Bonnie Bedelia	Holly Gennaro McClane
Reginald VelJohnson	Al Powell
Alexander Godunov	Karl
Paul Gleason	Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson
William Atherton	Richard Thornburg
De'voreaux White	Argyle
Hart Bochner	Harry Ellis
James Shigeta	Joe Takagi
Dennis Hayden	Eddie
Clarence Gilyard Jr.	Theo
Bruno Doyon	Franco
Andreas Wisniewski	Tony
Al Leong	Uli
Robert Davi	FBI Special Agent Johnson
Grand L. Bush	FBI Agent Johnson

Production details

The Nakatomi building is actually Twentieth Century Fox headquarters, and the company charged itself rent for use of the (unfinished) building as if the production were simply another tenant of the building, as well as damages for the destruction of the sidewalk guardrail destroyed by the LAPD armored personnel carrier.

According to commentary from the movie's DVD release, Alan Rickman's surprise when Gruber is dropped from the building is genuine: the director chose to release Rickman a full second before he expected it in order to get genuine surprise, a move which angered Rickman. The text commentary track also reveals that the shooting script did not originally feature the meeting between McClane and Gruber pretending to be a hostage; it was only written in when it was discovered that Rickman could do an American accent.

Whenever Gruber fires his weapon, the scene cuts away. McTiernan did this to avoid showing Rickman's involuntary habit of flinching when the gun recoiled.

In the German dub, the names and backgrounds of the German-born terrorists were changed into English forms (mostly into their British equivalents): Hans became Jack, Karl became Charlie, Heinrich turned into Henry. The new background depicts them as radical Irish activists having gone freelance and for profit rather than ideals. This was because German terrorism (especially by the Rote Armee Fraktion) was still considered a sensitive issue by the German government in the 1980s.

Die Hard was renamed Big Building Fight in Thailand.

Reception

When Die Hard was released, it was considered one of the best action films of its era. This is probably in part due to the fact that there are few artificial plot points in the story. It is said to have reinvented the action genre and set the 90s for action/thriller movies such as Under Siege, Passenger 57 and Speed. "Die Hard on a _____" became a common way to describe the plot of many of the action films that came in its wake. For example, for the 1990s action flick, Speed, was called "Die Hard on a bus" The movie was also responsible for creating the "action star" archetype that is a far more fallible and human hero, wearing few pieces of clothing, speaking few words (including "one-liners") and always having a rough look across their face. Die Hard grossed $80,707,729 at the U.S. Box Office.

It was highly acclaimed by critics and spawned three sequels Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), and Live Free or Die Hard, which was released on June 27 2007 in the States.

Die Hard was listed at #39 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Thrills List of the most thrilling American movies of all time in 2001.

In 2003, Hans Gruber was listed at #46 on the AFI's 50 greatest villains list from their 100 Years, 100 Heroes and Villains special. Surprisingly, McClane was not listed among the heroes, which some fans speculate is due to his perception as more of an anti-hero.

John McClane's infamous line (imitated by Hans Gruber in the film's final minutes), "Yippee Ki Yay, Motherfucker" was voted as #96 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere Magazine in 2007.

In the 22 June 2007 issue of Entertainment Weekly, it was named the number one best action movie of all time.

Sequels

• Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990)
• Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)
• Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

Video games

Main article: Die Hard games

A number of video games based on the Die Hard series of films have been made, including Die Hard Trilogy, Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas, Die Hard Arcade, Die Hard: Vendetta, and Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza. There was also a NES video game based on the original movie.

See also

• Spy Hard

External links

• Die Hard at IMDb
• Die Hard at Rotten Tomatoes
• Script
• Script analysis of the film
• Die Hard Trailer