Die Hard

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

Die Hard
Theatricial release poster
Directed by	John McTiernan
Written by	Screenplay: Steven E. de Souza Jeb Stuart Novel: Roderick Thorp
Produced by	Lawrence Gordon Joel Silver Associate Producer: Beau Marks Executive Producer: Charles Gordon
Starring	Bruce Willis Alan Rickman Bonnie Bedelia Reginald VelJohnson Alexander Godunov Paul Gleason
Cinematography	Jan de Bont
Edited by	John F. Link Frank J. Urioste
Music by	Michael Kamen Chris Boardman (uncredited)
Production companies	Silver Pictures Gordon Company
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date	July 15, 1988
Running time	131 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$30 million (estimated)
Box office	$83,008,852 (domestic) $138,708,852 (worldwide)

Die Hard is a 1988 American action film and the first in the Die Hard film series. The film was directed by John McTiernan and written by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza. It 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 film starring Frank Sinatra. The film was produced by Lawrence and Charles Gordon, along with Joel Silver.

It stars Bruce Willis as NYPD officer John McClane and Alan Rickman as terrorist thief Hans Gruber. The film was followed by three sequels; Die Hard 2 in 1990, Die Hard with a Vengeance in 1995, and Live Free or Die Hard in 2007.

Plot

Fox Plaza in Los Angeles, portrayed in the film as "Nakatomi Plaza".

On Christmas Eve, Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) of the New York City Police Department arrives in Los Angeles to reconcile with his estranged wife, Holly Gennaro (Bonnie Bedelia). McClane is driven to the Nakatomi Plaza building by a limo driver named Argyle (De'voreaux White). The company Christmas party is disrupted by the arrival of thirteen terrorists led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman). The terrorists cut the telephone lines, seal the building exits, and replace the building guard with one of their own. Hans and his group secure the party goers as hostages, but McClane manages to slip into the stairwell of the building. Gruber portrays himself to the police as a terrorist working towards various extremist goals, but it is revealed that they are actually trying to steal $640 million in bearer bonds from the Nakatomi vault. When Nakatomi executive Joseph Takagi (James Shigeta) refuses to reveal the code for one of the vault's seven locks, Gruber executes him. Gruber orders Theo (Clarence Gilyard Jr.), his technical expert, to break through the locks on the vault. Theo reminds Hans that the final lock is powered by circuits that cannot be cut locally. Gruber promises to handle the last lock.

McClane moves through the building, hiding from or killing the terrorists he encounters. He learns more of their motives while acquiring a two-way radio, C4 explosives, and detonators from the body of one terrorist. McClane uses the radio to attract the attention of the LAPD, who send Sergeant Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson) to investigate. Gruber sends his men, led by Karl (Alexander Godunov), to kill McClane and retrieve the detonators. Fooled by the impostor guard, Powell is about to leave when McClane drops the corpse of a terrorist onto Powell's police car. McClane explains the situation via the two-way radio as the police, led by Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson (Paul Gleason), arrive. The police send in a SWAT team and an armored vehicle. McClane and Powell are unable to prevent the SWAT team from being ambushed, but McClane manages to kill the terrorists attacking the SWAT team. One of Holly's coworkers, Harry Ellis (Hart Bochner), tries to negotiate with Hans and McClane for the return of the detonators. McClane refuses to return them, and Hans shoots Ellis. The FBI arrive, and take control from the police. They order the power to the building shut down, which deactivates the vault's final lock as Gruber had intended.

Gruber lures the FBI into a trap by giving them a list of demands including a helicopter to transport his men and the hostages from the roof of the building to Los Angeles International Airport. When McClane finds Gruber working on something below the roof, Gruber pretends to be a hostage. They share a smoke and McClane gives Gruber an unloaded gun, but is forced to flee when Gruber calls the other terrorists. As Gruber orders the hostages to the roof he learns from a TV report that Holly is McClane's wife and takes her hostage. Before McClane can warn anyone about the explosives on the roof, he is stopped by Karl. McClane subdues Karl by hanging him by the neck with a chain. McClane scares the hostages away from the roof by shooting a gun into the air. The FBI mistakes him for a terrorist and shoots at him, forcing him to jump off the roof tethered to a fire hose just before the terrorists detonate the C4. He re-enters the building via an office window, making his way to Gruber, who uses Holly as a human shield. McClane pretends to surrender and shoots Hans and the final terrorist after they are distractedddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd. Gruber crashes through a window and grabs Holly's wrist, hanging on to her watch. McClane is able to release the watch, catching Holly while Gruber falls to his death.

McClane and Holly are escorted from the building, meeting Powell in person. Karl's body is brought out on a stretcher when he rises up with a gun and points it at McClane. Karl is shot by Powell before he can open fire, and Argyle comes crashing out the parking garage in the limo, after having detained Theo attempting to escape with the bonds. John and Holly are driven off by Argyle, their relationship renewed by their experiences.

Cast

• Bruce Willis as Detective John McClane
• Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber
• Bonnie Bedelia as Holly Gennaro McClane
• Reginald VelJohnson as Sgt. Al Powell
• Alexander Godunov as Karl Vreski
• Paul Gleason as Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson
• William Atherton as Richard Thornburg
• De'voreaux White as Argyle
• James Shigeta as Joseph Yoshinobo "Joe" Takagi
• Dennis Hayden as Eddie
• Clarence Gilyard Jr. as Theo
• Bruno Doyon as Franco
• Hart Bochner as Harry Ellis
• Taylor Fry as Lucy McClane
• Noah Land as John McClane Jr.
• Hans Buhringer as Fritz
• Gerard Bonn as Kristoff
• Gary Roberts as Heinrich
• Al Leong as Uli
• Lorenzo Caccialanza as Marco
• Joey Plewa as Alexander
• Wilhelm von Homburg as James
• Andreas Wisniewski as Tony Vreski
• Robert Davi as Special Agent Johnson
• Grand L. Bush as Agent Johnson
• David Patrick Kelly as S.W.A.T. Team Member
• Carmine Zozzora as Rivers

Production

The newly-built corporate headquarters of 20th Century Fox, Fox Plaza in Los Angeles, was used for exterior shots of the Nakatomi building. Die Hard follows its source material — Roderick Thorp's novel Nothing Lasts Forever — closely, much of the film's memorable scenes, characters, and dialogue taken directly from the novel. Nothing Lasts Forever, a sequel to Thorp's earlier novel The Detective, was written with the intention of being adapted into a film sequel to the film adaptation of The Detective, which starred Frank Sinatra. When Sinatra turned down the offer to star in the sequel, the story was altered to be a stand-alone film with no connections to The Detective. Other changes included the older hero of the novel becoming younger, the hero's daughter becoming his wife, and the American Klaxon Oil Corporation becoming the Japanese Nakatomi Corporation. The novel's tone is darker and more serious than the film's, and the politically-motivated fighters of the novel became thieves pretending to be terrorists in the film. Director John McTiernan states on the DVD commentary that the change from a tale of political terrorism to a heist film was made because he wanted to bring "joy" to the story, rather than having the villains be overly ponderous.

In the German dub, the names and backgrounds of the German-born terrorists were changed into English forms (mostly into their British equivalents, with the exception of Marco and Franco who remained Italian as they were in the original English version): Hans became Jack, Karl became Charlie, Heinrich turned into Henry (in the scene where John is writing down the names of the terrorists, a voiceover in the German version says "I'm gonna call you Hans and Karl, just like the two evil giants in the fairy tale" while referring to them as Jack and Charlie later). The new background depicts them as some internationally organized terrorists having gone freelance and for profit rather than ideals. This was because German terrorism (especially by the Red Army Faction) was still considered a sensitive issue by the German government in the 1980s.

According to commentary from the film'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 perform a rather convincing American accent.

The name Hans Gruber was used by one of the villains in the 1966 film, Our Man Flint.

Music

Beethoven's 9th Symphony is featured prominently in Michael Kamen's score throughout the film, in many guises and variations (mostly as a leitmotif for Gruber and the terrorists), and thematic variations on "Singin' in the Rain" are also featured as the theme for the character Theo. John McTiernan said in the Die Hard DVD commentary that he incorporated those themes into the movie's soundtrack as an homage to Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (which featured both pieces of music). Basing his score around thematic variations on well-known pieces is a conceit that Kamen previously used in Brazil and would repeat in Die Hard 2 (which featured Jean Sibelius's "Finlandia") and McTiernan's Die Hard With A Vengeance (which featured variations on the Civil War marching tune, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home", again previously used in a Kubrick film, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb). Due to the film's Christmas setting, the score also features sleigh bells in some cues, as well as the Christmas pop standard Winter Wonderland. The end credits of the film begin with the Christmas song "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" (performed by Vaughn Monroe) and continues/concludes with Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 is playing during the reception at the party at the start of the film.

Near the beginning of the film, limousine driver Argyle plays the rap song "Christmas In Hollis", performed by Run-D.M.C. and first released in 1987. Later in the movie Argyle, while talking on the phone in the limousine, also plays the hit song "Skeletons" by Stevie Wonder, also released in 1987.

The final four minutes were tracked with music from two other Twentieth Century Fox features - these were 'temp tracks' which the studio ultimately decided to leave in the picture. The poignant music heard when McClane and Powell see each other for the first time is from John Scott's score for Man on Fire (1987). When Karl appears with his rifle, a cut from the 1986 sci-fi action film Aliens composed by James Horner is heard. This music can be found on the Aliens soundtrack as the first few minutes of the cue "Resolution and Hyperspace".

In an odd coincidence, similarly to Aliens, the score by Michael Kamen was heavily edited, with music samples looped over and over and cues added to scenes where they didn't belong. The most notable example is the "brass blast" heard when John shoots Marco from under a table and later when Hans Gruber falls to his death.

The score as heard in the film was released by Varese Sarabande in February 2002, but was limited to 3000 copies.

Reception

When Die Hard was released, it was highly acclaimed by critics and was considered one of the best action films of its era. Based on 50 reviews collected by the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of critics gave Die Hard a positive review, with an average rating of 8.2/10. "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, 1994's Speed was called "Die Hard on a bus", 1996's The Rock was dubbed "Die Hard on an island". However, Roger Ebert gave it a less than flattering review, giving it a mere two stars and criticizing the "stupidity" of the characters and the satirical view the film takes on authority figures.

Die Hard had a budget of $28 million. Released in 21 theaters on July 15, 1988 it widened to 1,276 theaters the following weekend, grossing $7.1 million. The film earned $83 million domestically and $138.7 million worldwide. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Film Editing, Best Sound and Best Visual Effects.

The film spawned three popular sequels: Die Hard 2 (1990), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) and Live Free or Die Hard (2007), all featuring Willis as McClane. Die Hard was listed at #39 on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills list of the most thrilling American films of all time in 2001. In the June 22, 2007 issue of Entertainment Weekly, it was named the best action film of all time. In 2003, Hans Gruber was listed at #46 on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains special. John McClane's catchphrase "Yippee kai yay, motherfucker" was voted as #96 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere magazine in 2007.

See also

• Die Hard film series
• Die Hard games
• Films considered the greatest ever

External links

• Die Hard at IMDb
• Die Hard at AllMovie
• Die Hard at Rotten Tomatoes
• Script