Die Hard

Die Hard
File:Die Hard.gif
Directed by	John McTiernan
Written by	Roderick Thorp (novel "Nothing Lasts Forever") Jeb Stuart & Steven E. de Souza (screenplay)
Produced by	Lawrence Gordon Joel Silver Charles Gordon (executive producer) Beau Marks (associate producer)
Starring	Bruce Willis Alan Rickman Bonnie Bedelia 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.
Language	English

This article is about Die Hard, a 1988 action film starring Bruce Willis. For the phrase, see Die hard.

Die Hard is a Hollywood action film released in 1988, written by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, starring Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, Alan Rickman, William Atherton, and directed by John McTiernan. A huge critical and commercial success, Die Hard propelled Willis' film career, giving him more credibility in action and dramatic roles, and helped Alan Rickman become a popular actor 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.

Taglines:

• "40 Stories Of Sheer Adventure!"
• "High above the city of L.A. a team of terrorists has seized a building, taken hostages and declared war. One man has managed to escape. An off-duty cop hiding somewhere inside. He's alone, tired... and the only chance anyone has got."
• "Twelve terrorists. One cop. The odds are against John McClane... That's just the way he likes it."

Synopsis

The film opens with New York City police detective John McClane arriving in Los Angeles to reunite with his estranged wife Holly, played by Bonnie Bedelia, for the 1987 Christmas holidays. He is picked up in a limousine manned by the talkative driver Argyle (De'voreaux White) and taken to Holly's place of work, a large office building named the Nakatomi Tower after its corporate owner. After dropping off John, Argyle takes the limo into the building's underground parking garage, to wait and see if his services will be further required.

A company Christmas party is taking place on the 30th floor of the building. After an initial meeting, which includes strained greetings with her boss (Joseph Takagi) and an oily colleague (Ellis), the couple have an argument over their separation and her decision to be addressed by her maiden name "Gennero." Holly rejoins the party while John stays in a room kicking himself for picking a fight with his wife.

Unknown to any of the party-goers, a gang of terrorists silently invade the building, led by the German Hans Gruber. Karl, the gang's ruthless enforcer, kills both lobby security guards. The gang seizes control of the security and communication systems, isolating them from the outside. The terrorists then take everyone at the party hostage and pull Joseph Takagi, Nakatomi's regional director, aside for some private business. Once alone, they reveal that they are not terrorists, but actually criminals who are posing as terrorists as part of their plan to steal $600 million worth of bearer bonds from the Nakatomi Plaza's main security vault. When the director is unable (or unwilling) to give them the access codes to the vault, he is shot dead and the gang implement their secondary plan to break into the vault. Their cold-blooded scheme involves murdering all the hostages with explosives in order to fake their own deaths and hide their escape with the loot.

John McClane manages to slip away when the rest of the party-goers are rounded up. Barefooted and armed only with his police Beretta pistol, McClane tries to summon the authorities (a continual theme in the film is McClane's inability to find adequate footwear). When he pulls a fire alarm, the gang detects it and calls the fire department to report it as a false alarm. One member of the gang, Karl's brother Tony, is sent to deal with the meddler, but is killed in mid-struggle with John by a head-first plunge down a flight of stairs. Grabbing the dead man's two-way radio and Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine gun, McClane desperately calls for help from the roof while dodging the brutishly vengeful Karl, but the police assume it is a prank call and are more concerned about his unauthorized use of the frequency. They finally do send a nearby policeman to the Nakatomi Plaza to investigate. Unfortunately for McClane, Gruber's gang overhears McClane's communication and already have a member, Eddie, waiting in the lobby to pose as a security guard to divert investigators.

Sgt. Al Powell (played by Reginald VelJohnson) is sent to check the disturbance and is fooled into thinking all is in order. After killing two more members of the gang, Heinrich and Marco, who storm into his room while he tries to break a window to signal Officer Powell, McClane sees to his horror that the cop - his last chance to get help - is leaving the scene. In one last desperate effort, McClane throws Marco's body on top of Powell's police car, forcing the cop to call frantically for backup. One of Hans' men, Alexander, opens fire on Powell's police car as the officer flees the plaza.

Nakatomi Tower (in real life actually known as Fox Plaza)

Now with proof of a terrorist attack, the LAPD responds in full force. However, the police response was part of Hans Gruber's plan all along. Gruber's intent was to manipulate the police into helping open the vault and set up their escape. The problem for them is that John McClane, upon seeing the incompetence and reckless attitude of the LAPD caused by hard-headed Deputy Chief Dwayne Robinson, resumes his fight against the terrorists from inside. To that end, McClane has taken a vital supply of detonators for the explosives from one of the dead terrorists. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game as Hans Gruber tries to implement his group's plan while recovering the detonators and simultaneously trying to stop McClane from interfering further. During one scene, Ellis, the oily co-worker of Holly's that McClane had met earlier, makes an ill-considered attempt to negotiate with Gruber by passing himself as a friend of McClane's and attempting to convince John to return the detonators. The ploy fails as McClane refuses to take the bait and Ellis is murdered.

Eventually, after numerous deadly engagements during which Powell is McClane's only ally among the authorities, Gruber takes advantage of an unexpected encounter with McClane and recovers the detonators by expertly faking an American accent, pretending to be a hostage, and leading John into an ambush in a computer lab. John frantically escapes the ambush with painful consequences as Gruber has all the glass in the room shot out to wound McClane's bare feet. McClane doctors his feet and figures out Gruber's plan, which involves blowing up the roof of the building along with the hostages. Meanwhile, the FBI, who have taken over the situation from the LAPD, plays right into Gruber's hands by cutting electrical power to the building, allowing Gruber's gang to bypass the last electromagnetic seal on the vault and loot the bonds. The hostages at this point are rounded up by the criminals and taken to the roof, where supposedly they will be saved by helicopters. After fighting off Karl by apparently strangling him, John drives the hostages back off the roof and barely manages to escape being shot by the FBI as a terrorist when Gruber sets off the explosion, destroying an FBI helicopter and almost killing McClane. John escapes from the roof by tying a fire hose around his waist, jumping over the side of the building and blasting his way through the window into an office a couple of stories down. Back outside the building, an irresponsible TV reporter named Richard Thornburg (Atherton) finds out about McClane and goes to Holly's home for an easy news story, interviewing the couple's two young children Lucy (Taylor Fry) and John Jr. (Noah Land). Seeing the report, along with a picture of the kids on Holly's desk, alerts Gruber to the fact that Holly is John's wife, something she has wisely refrained from telling him. He takes her as a special hostage.

In the meantime, Argyle, after making cheerful use of the limo's many frills and thus unaware of the events happening right above him, gets wind of the situation through a radio report. He manages to disable the terrorist Theo (Clarence Gilyard Jr.), who is preparing the gang's getaway vehicle, by ramming the fake ambulance they were going to use with his limo and giving the man a knockout punch.

The film climaxes with a battered and beaten McClane confronting Gruber and Eddie one last time high up in the tower, with Holly being held at gunpoint. With only two rounds in a hidden gun taped to his back, McClane suckers Hans by pretending to surrender, then shoots him through the chest, turning to blast Eddie in the forehead as well. Hans Gruber falls out the shattered window but pulls Holly with him. McClane manages to grab onto her, while Gruber attempts to finish them both off with his gun. Gruber is hanging on to Holly's Rolex watch, a gift from her boss. McClane undoes the band and Gruber's evil smirk changes into a flash of terror as the villain falls to his death from the 32nd floor.

As McClane and his wife are escorted from the building, the seemingly indestructible Karl suddenly reappears, brandishing his Steyr AUG in one final attempt to kill McClane. As McClane shields his wife, Karl is finally cut down for good by several bullets from an unseen shooter. As the image comes into view, we see it is Powell who has saved his friend's life. Powell had earlier confided to John that he had mistakenly shot and killed a teenager who appeared to be armed. Until now, Powell had not been able to bring himself to fire a gun, and was headed for desk-duty.

McClane and Holly, finally safe, prepare to leave. Thornburg approaches them, still relentlessly angling for a story, and is punched in the face by Holly (who had been a horrified witness to Thornburg's TV interview with her kids). Argyle crashes his limo through the garage's security barrier, and the couple are driven away from the scene in the battered vehicle, kissing each other on the passenger seat while their driver vows to be with them to see how exciting their New Year's Eve will be, given how they spent their Christmas Eve.

Film & DVD Trivia

During the final scene in which Karl suddenly reappears for one final attempt to kill McClane, a music cue from James Horner's score of Aliens is heard. The cue is "Resolution and Hyperspace" from the Aliens soundtrack, in which the first part of the track was ultimately unused in the original Aliens film.

In the DVD version of the movie, some inside facts about the movie are revealed in the audio commentary, including:

• 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.
• In a scene where Hans is commenting to the hostages on how Takagi was killed, Alan Rickman came up with the ad-lib, "He won't be joining us for the rest of his life."
• In the scene where Rickman is lowered from the window (as Hans) to drop 30 stories, he was told that the stuntman would release him at the count of three. However, the stuntman let go at the count of two, which is why in the film he has such a surprised look on his face.
• In the scene were McClane realizes that the man he has met on the roof, Bill Clay, is actually Hans, the actual reason he's able to tell is because he saw "Bill" looking at his watch, which is the same special expensive watch as the terrorist McClane killed and he saw others wearing while he was standing above them in the elevator, but this information was dropped from the film.
• There is an additional scene (included on the DVD) where the FBI attempt to cut power to the building, which involves two additional steps. The scene involved a special effect and was in black-and-white, as it was never included in the theatrical release and thus was not fixed in post production. In the special scene, a technician from the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power uses a bolt cutter on a transmission wire in an underground vault, inside a manhole. In a flurry of sparks, he disconnects power to the building, and it goes dark. Hans tells Theo to irritate the FBI by restoring the building's power. He does so, whereupon the original scene resumes where another technician is ordered by the FBI to have an entire 10-square block grid shut down.
• The majority of the terrorists arrive in a truck, and it is noted that the van that they arrive in is not really large enough to hold the terrorists and the ambulance they were going to use to escape; at the time they filmed the scene where the terrorists walk out of the delivery van, the writers did not know exactly what the terrorists were going to use as a method of escape.
• The truck the terrorists use has the name "Pacific Courier", which means "Messenger of Peace". This firm name is used as the name on the airplane which is destroyed in the Keanu Reeves film Speed.
• The Nakatomi plaza was also used in the filming of the movie Airheads (Brendan Fraser, Adam Sandler). The radio station KPPX Rebel Radio is directly in front of the Nakatomi Tower.

Praise

When Die Hard was released, it was considered one of the best action films of its era. It is said to have reinvented the action genre and set the 90's with action/thriller movies such as Speed. Die Hard grossed $80,707,729 at the U.S. Box Office. It was highly acclaimed by critics and spawned two sequels Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990) and Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995). The fourth film in the series, titled Live Free or Die Hard is currently in production (as of 2006). A previous attempt at a fourth Die Hard eventually evolved into Tears of the Sun.

German version trivia

In the German dub the names and backgrounds of the German-born terrorists were changed into British (mostly into their British equivalents): Hans became Jack, Karl became Charlie, Heinrich turned into Henry etc. The new background depicted them as radical Irish activists having gone freelance and for profit rather than ideals. This leads to some odd continuity problems with Die Hard with a Vengeance; there, the villain is considered to be the brother of Hans Gruber, yet he's German.

Although the true reason for the change has not yet been made public, it is a strong guess that the German producers felt uncomfortable about the idea of German terrorists, especially since there had been activities of German terrorists; most notorious were the actions of the Rote Armee Fraktion ('Red Army Faction'; short RAF) between 1970 and 1998 (when the group was officially dissolved).

Plus, much of the "German" spoken in the English version is grammatically and syntactically incorrect. The most noticeable mistake is when Hans instructs Karl to shoot the glass screens. Rickman says: "Schieß den Fenster", which would literally mean, "Shoot the window". But "den (Fenster)" would signify a masculine accusative, whereas in German it would be "das (Fenster)", a neutral accusative. Also, in sense the sentence is incorrect; in correct German - as it was used in the German version -, it should be either "Schieß auf die (Glas-)Scheiben" or "Zerschieß die Scheiben".

Video games based on Die Hard

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 Arcade, Die Hard: Vendetta, and Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza. There was also a NES video game based on the original movie.

Die Hard Parodies

On the Ben Stiller Show, the Die Hard series was parodied as Stiller took the place of John McClane, defending a supermarket against terrorists on Christmas Eve.

In Loaded Weapon (mainly a parody of the Lethal Weapon franchise), Bruce Willis (in a similar singlet and trousers as he had in Die Hard) emerges from a caravan that exploded from heavy gunfire waving a white flag, surrendering.

The Dexter's Laboratory episode "Trapped With A Vengance" is similar to Die Hard.

See also Spy Hard and Loaded Weapon 1.

Quotes

"Yippee-ki-yay, mother fucker"- John McClane's signature line "Agent Johnson and Johnson.... no relation"- By FBI Agent Johnson (note: one agent is white, the other is black)

Films that use the Die Hard formula

• Die Hard 2: Die Harder
• Sudden Death
• Under Siege
• Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
• Passenger 57
• Executive Decision
• The Rock (film)
• Con Air
• Cliffhanger (film)
• Speed (film)
• Air Force One (film)
• Toy Soldiers (film)
• Snakes on a Plane
• No Contest (film)

External links

• Die Hard at IMDb
• Script analysis of the film