| Die Hard | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | John McTiernan |
| Produced by | Lawrence Gordon Joel Silver |
| Screenplay by | Steven E. de Souza Jeb Stuart |
| Based on | Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp |
| Starring | Bruce Willis Alan Rickman Bonnie Bedelia Alexander Godunov |
| Music by | Michael Kamen |
| Cinematography | Jan de Bont |
| Editing by | John F. Link Frank J. Urioste |
| Studio | Silver Pictures Gordon Company |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | July 15, 1988 |
| Running time | 131 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $28 million |
| Box office | $138,708,852 |
Die Hard is a 1988 American action film directed by John McTiernan and written by Steve de Souza and Jeb Stuart based on the 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp. Released on July 15, 1988, the film follows NYPD officer John McClane (Bruce Willis) as he takes on a group of highly organized criminals led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) performing a heist under the guise of a terrorist attack, using hostages including McClane's wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) to keep the police at bay.
The film's success spawned three sequels; Die Hard 2 in 1990, Die Hard with a Vengeance in 1995, and Live Free or Die Hard in 2007.
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On Christmas Eve, New York City Police officer John McClane arrives in Los Angeles to reconcile with his estranged wife, Holly. McClane is driven to the Nakatomi Plaza building for a company Christmas party by Argyle. While McClane changes clothes, the party is disrupted by the arrival of Hans Gruber and his heavily armed group: Karl, Franco, Tony, Theo, Alexander, Marco, Kristoff, Eddie, Uli, Heinrich, Fritz, and James. The group seize the tower and secure those inside as hostages except for McClane who manages to slip away.
Gruber singles out Nakatomi executive Joseph Takagi claiming he intends to teach the Nakatomi Corporation a lesson for its greed. Away from the hostages, Gruber interrogates Takagi for the code to the Nakatomi computer to access the building's vault. Gruber admits that they are using terrorism as a decoy while they attempt to steal $640 million in bearer bonds in the vault. Takagi refuses to cooperate and is executed by Hans as McClane secretly observes. McClane accidentally gives himself away and is pursued by Tony. McClane manages to kill Tony, taking his weapon and radio. McClane uses the radio to contact the LAPD who send Sgt. Al Powell to investigate, while Hans sends his men to stop McClane. McClane kills Heinrich and Marco and escapes. Powell, finding nothing strange about the building, attempts to leave, but McClane drops Marco's corpse onto Powell's car, alerting the LAPD who surround the building. McClane takes Heinrich's bag containing C-4 explosives and detonators.
The police assault the building with a SWAT team and an armored vehicle. The attack is anticipated and James and Alexander massacre the SWAT team with missiles. McClane uses the C-4 to blow up the building floor occupied by James and Alexander, killing them both. Holly's coworker Harry attempts to mediate between Hans and McClane for the return of the detonators. McClane refuses to return them causing Gruber to execute Ellis. While checking the explosives attached to the roof, Gruber is confronted by McClane. Gruber passes himself off as an escaped hostage and is given a gun by McClane. Gruber attempts to shoot McClane but finds that the gun has no bullets. Before McClane can act, Karl, Franco, and Fritz arrive. McClane kills Fritz and Franco, but is forced to flee, leaving the detonators behind.
FBI agents arrive and take command of the police situation outside, ordering the building's power be shut off. The power loss disables the vault's final lock as Gruber had anticipated, allowing them to access the bonds. Gruber demands that a helicopter arrive on the roof for transport—his intention is to detonate the explosives on the roof to kill the hostages and to fake the deaths of his men and himself. Karl finds McClane and the two fight. Meanwhile Gruber views a news report by Richard Thornburg that features McClane's children, causing Gruber to realize that McClane is Holly's husband. The terrorists order the hostages to the roof, but Gruber takes Holly with him to use against McClane. McClane seemingly kills Karl and heads to the roof. He kills Uli and sends the hostages back downstairs before the explosives detonate, destroying the roof and the FBI helicopter.
Theo goes to the parking garage to retrieve their getaway vehicle but is knocked unconscious by Argyle who had been trapped in the garage during the siege. A weary McClane finds Holly with Gruber and his remaining men and knocks Kristoff unconscious. McClane surrenders his machine gun to spare Holly, but then distracts Gruber and Eddie by laughing, allowing him to grab a concealed handgun taped to his back. McClane kills Eddie and shoots Gruber in the shoulder, sending him crashing through a window. Gruber prevents himself from falling by holding onto Holly by her watch. McClane manages to release the watch and Gruber falls to his death on the street below.
McClane and Holly are escorted from the building and meet Powell in person. Karl emerges from the building disguised as a hostage and attempts to shoot McClane, but he is gunned down by Powell. Argyle crashes through the parking garage door in the limo. Thornburg arrives and attempts to interview McClane, but is punched by Holly. McClane and Holly are driven away by Argyle.
Die Hard follows its source material — Roderick Thorp's novel Nothing Lasts Forever — closely; many of the film's memorable scenes, characters, and dialogue are 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. The newly built corporate headquarters of 20th Century Fox, Fox Plaza in Los Angeles, was used for exterior shots of the Nakatomi building.
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.
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). Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 is playing during the party sequence near the start of the film.
As the film has a Christmas setting, the score also features sleigh bells in some cues, as well as the Christmas pop standard "Winter Wonderland." Two 1987 pop songs are used as source music: near the beginning of the film, limousine driver Argyle plays the rap song "Christmas In Hollis", performed by Run-D.M.C., and later, while talking on the phone in the limousine, Argyle is listening to Stevie Wonder's "Skeletons." 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.
The final four minutes of the film 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 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 science fiction 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".
Similarly to Aliens, the score by Michael Kamen was heavily edited, with music samples looped over and over and cues added to scenes. 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.[1]
The score as heard in the film was released by Varese Sarabande in February 2002, but was limited to 3000 copies.[2]
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.[3] The film's title and its story of a lone hero battling a multitude of single-minded opponents in an isolated setting also became a common descriptor for later action movies: "Die Hard on a _____" became a simple and easy way to define the plot of many action films that came in its wake. For example, 1994's Speed was called "Die Hard on a bus",[4] 1996's The Rock was dubbed "Die Hard on an island".[5] However, Roger Ebert gave it a less than flattering review, giving it a mere two stars and criticizing the stupidity of the deputy police chief character, claiming that "all by himself he successfully undermines the last half of the movie."[6]
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 $140.7 million worldwide.[7] The film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Film Editing, Best Sound (Don J. Bassman, Kevin F. Cleary, Richard Overton and Al Overton, Jr.) and Best Visual Effects.[8]
The film spawned three popular sequels: Die Hard 2 (1990), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) and Live Free or Die Hard (2007). A fifth film in the series, with the working title A Good Day to Die Hard, is scheduled for release on February 14, 2013. In 2001, Die Hard was listed at number 39 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills, a list America's most heart-pounding films.[9] In the June 22, 2007 issue of Entertainment Weekly, it was named the best action film of all time.[10] In 2003, Hans Gruber was listed at #46 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains list. He was also listed as the 17th greatest movie character by Empire Magazine.[11] John McClane was placed at number 12 on the same list.[12] McClane's catchphrase "Yippee kai yay, motherfucker" was voted as #96 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere magazine in 2007.[13] In 2010, Die Hard was voted by Empire Magazine as "The Greatest Christmas Film of All Time".[14]
In July 2007, Bruce Willis donated the undershirt worn in the film to the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution.[15]
American Film Institute Lists:
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 retained their Italian and French nationalities respectively): 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.[20]
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