Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46748 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-07-30
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Running time: 131 minutes

From Amazon.co.uk
This seminal 1988 thriller made Bruce Willis a star and established a new template for action stories: "Terrorists take over a (blank), and a lone hero, unknown to the villains, is trapped with them." In Die Hard, those bad guys, led by the velvet-voiced Alan Rickman, assume control of a Los Angeles high-rise with Willis's visiting New York cop inside. The attraction of the film has as much to do with the sight of a barefoot mortal running around the guts of a modern office tower as it has to do with the plentiful fight sequences and the bond the hero establishes with an LA beat cop. Bonnie Bedelia plays Willis's wife, Hart Bochner is good as a brash hostage who tries negotiating his way to freedom, Alexander Godunov makes for a believable killer with lethal feet, and William Atherton is slimy as a busybody reporter. This film is exceptionally well directed by John McTiernan. --Tom Keogh

Amazon.com Essential Video
This seminal 1988 thriller made Bruce Willis a star and established a new template for action stories: "Terrorists take over a (blank), and a lone hero, unknown to the villains, is trapped with them." In Die Hard, those bad guys, led by the velvet-voiced Alan Rickman, assume control of a Los Angeles high-rise with Willis's visiting New York cop inside. The attraction of the film has as much to do with the sight of a barefoot mortal running around the guts of a modern office tower as it has to do with the plentiful fight sequences and the bond the hero establishes with an LA beat cop. Bonnie Bedelia plays Willis's wife, Hart Bochner is good as a brash hostage who tries negotiating his way to freedom, Alexander Godunov makes for a believable killer with lethal feet, and William Atherton is slimy as a busybody reporter. Exceptionally well directed by John McTiernan. --Tom Keogh

Review
John McTiernan's Die Hard introduced a type of character that hadn't been seen much in big-budget action films of the 1980s: the working-class hero. Apart from Sylvester Stallone's first Rambo movie and some of the cruder, decidedly low-budget martial arts movies starring Chuck Norris, there wasn't a precedent for Bruce Willis' gruff John McClane. In contrast to its predecessors, Die Hard was such a high-profile production that Willis was suddenly elevated to the status of cultural icon, not unlike Sean Connery and his alter ego, James Bond. Willis and McTiernan can take credit for bringing back the kind of distinctly American, masculine swagger John Wayne used to bring to his roles, albeit with a dirtier lexicon of catchphrases than Wayne ever would have used on camera. The director and his crew of special effects experts could also take credit for a series of explosions that rivaled the firepower and energy expended in Wayne's Hellfighters, Back to Bataan, Sands of Iwo Jima, Chisum, and The Longest Day. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Customer Reviews

Yippee Ki Yay
wow.i forgot how great this movie is.this movie has it all.this is one
thrill ride of a movie.all you need to know is this:terrorists have
taken control of a high rise building and have hostages.the only thing
standing in their way is one man:John McClane(Bruce Willis.)Bruce
Willis puts in a great performance as McClane,who becomes a one man
army.this movie is so much fun,you won't care(or have time to care)
about realism.this movie raised the bar for the action genre.it doesn't
take long to get going either,and you'll wonder where the tow hours
went.if you're an action junkie,and you haven't seen this movie,what
are you waiting for?for me Die Hard is a 5/5

If at first you succeed, why try again?
This is the first and best of the Die Hard movies. It is action packed from start to finish. A New York cop (Bruce Willis) goes to visit his estranged wife for Christmas and finds himself caught up in the middle of an apparent terrorist attack on the office building his wife works in. The terrorists however turn out to be nothing more than thieves trying to get their hands on $640 million in negotiable bearer bonds.

The movie is action packed almost from the start, one of the best movies of it's kind I've ever seen.

"Do I sound like I'm ordering a pizza?"
John McTiernan's "Die Hard" is one of the more celebrated entries in the action-adventure genre. Yet, the film upon close inspection is really just another "shoot-'em-up" production that ultimately wears out its welcome long before the final baddie is gunned down.

John McClane (Bruce Willis) is a New York police officer who has arrived in Los Angeles for Christmas. His wife (Bonnie Bedelia) has accepted a vice-president position with Nakatomi Corporation. While McClane is attending a Christmas party at his wife's new office building, a group of terrorists led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) seize the high-rise so that they may steal millions of dollars in negotiable bonds. McClane takes it upon himself to defeat the terrorists and free the hostages they have taken.

"Die Hard" does introduce some novel aspects to the genre - it's a nice change of pace to see an everyman hero instead of the typical secret agent or military super-soldier at the center of an action film, it's nice to see an action hero with a sensitive side, and it's also nice to see a villain with a degree of sophistication. But "Die Hard" intermixes these elements with so many loud explosions and gunfights that one becomes numb after awhile. Throw in too many supporting characters who are deficient in the intelligence department and one inexcusable resurrection at the end, and all you're left with is a film that is great to look at but nothing more. Willis more than proves he can play an action hero and Bedelia adds a welcome degree of charm to the proceedings. Yet, "Die Hard" turns out to be only a smidgen better than its action contemporaries from the period and that is not enough to make it something special.