Die Hard (1988) on Netflix
New York detective John McClane flies to Los Angeles to win back his estranged wife Holly at her company's Christmas party. Armed men seize her office tower, and McClane slips away unnoticed.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb8.2/101,040,194 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
New York City police detective John McClane lands in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve to mend things with his wife Holly, who works at the Nakatomi Corporation and uses her maiden name, Gennaro. A limo driver named Argyle drops him at the unfinished Nakatomi Plaza, where her office party is under way. While McClane washes up, a moving van pulls in and armed men under Hans Gruber take the partygoers hostage. Gruber is after $640 million in bearer bonds held in the building's vault, and he wants executive Joseph Takagi to give him the combination. McClane escapes the sweep into the maintenance areas barefoot, and starts looking for a way to call for help. His radio call reaches the Los Angeles police, and Sergeant Al Powell is sent to check on the building.
Cast
- Bruno Doyonas Franco
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Die Hard (1988)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- During a scene where McClane shoots a terrorist through a table, Willis fired the weapon while holding it compressed into his upper chest, and suffered permanent two-thirds hearing loss in his left ear from the loud blank cartridges going off close to his head.
- Because Die Hard was based on the novel sequel to the film adaptation of The Detective, the studio was contractually obliged to offer Frank Sinatra the role of John McClane; Sinatra, who was 70 at the time, declined.
- The role was then offered to major stars including Sylvester Stallone, Richard Gere, Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Burt Reynolds, Mel Gibson and Al Pacino; Arnold Schwarzenegger was offered it too, but wanted to branch out into comedy and turned it down to star in Twins (1988).
- Rickman had to fall backward onto the airbag, something stuntmen avoid because it costs them control, so McTiernan first demonstrated the stunt himself onto cardboard boxes; Rickman was then told he would be dropped on a count of three but let go earlier, and McTiernan said, "there's no way he could fake that".
- Willis insisted on performing many of his own stunts, and the first scene he shot was his leap from the top of Nakatomi Plaza with a firehose wrapped around his waist: a 25 ft jump from a five-story parking garage ledge onto an airbag as a 60 ft wall of flame exploded behind him.
- Before hiring composer Michael Kamen, McTiernan already knew he wanted Beethoven's 9th Symphony in the film, having heard it in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange; Kamen objected to "tarnishing" the piece in an action film and offered to misuse Richard Wagner's music instead.
- Bruce Willis donated the undershirt he wore in the film to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in July 2007; the blood and sweat-stained shirt is treated as an emblem of how McClane differed from archetypal, invincible heroes.
