DVD 114 min. IMDB 8.0

In verzameling
#261

Action

Bruce Willis	John McClane
Alan Rickman	Hans Gruber
Bonnie Bedelia	Holly Gennero McClane
Alexander Godunov	Karl
Reginald VelJohnson	Sgt. Al Powell
William Atherton	Thornburg
Paul Gleason	Dwayne T. Robinson
De'Voreaux White	Argyle
Hart Bochner	Ellis
James Shigeta	Takagi
Dennis Hayden	Eddie

Regisseur	John McTiernan
Producent	Lawrence Gordon; Joel Silver
Schrijver	Roderick Thorp; Jeb Stuart

It's Christmas time in L.A., and there's an employee party in progress on the 30th floor of the Nakatomi Corporation building. The revelry comes to a violent end when the partygoers are taken hostage by a group of terrorists headed by Hans Gruber ( Alan Rickman ), who plan to steal the $600 million locked in Nakatomi's high-tech safe. In truth, Gruber and his henchmen are only pretending to be politically motivated to throw the authorities off track; also in truth, Gruber has no intention of allowing anyone to get out of the building alive. Meanwhile, New York cop John McClane ( Bruce Willis ) has come to LA to visit his estranged wife Holly ( Bonnie Bedelia ), who happens to be one of the hostages. Disregarding the orders of the authorities surrounding the building, McClane, who fears nothing (except heights), takes on the villains, armed with one handgun and plenty of chutzpah. Until Die Hard came along, Bruce Willis was merely that wisecracking guy on Moonlighting . After the film's profits started rolling in, Willis found himself one of the highest-paid and most sought-after leading men in Hollywood, and his cool wise-guy persona set the tone for the new style of ultra-violent yet ultra-ironic action movie, continued in the sequels Die Hard 2 (1990) and Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995), as well as in countless imitations. — Hal Erickson