Product Description
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Lt. John McClane doesn't go looking for trouble, but he
always manages to find it anyway, whether it's in an office
building, an airplane, or the streets of New York City. Each
title contains two discs loaded with special features.
.com
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Die Hard is the movie franchise that made a movie star
out of TV star Bruce Willis, and created an entire action-movie
genre of its own. In the original 1988 film, Willis plays
wisecracking New York cop John McClane, who arrives at the
Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles to meet up with his estranged wife,
Holly (Bonny Bedelia), at her office Christmas party. As luck
would have it, the company ends up in the middle of a terrorist
plot led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his gang of expert
killers, and with little help coming from outside, McClane has to
pick off his enemies one by one. Thus was born the "Die Hard
genre," epitomized by such films as Under Siege ("Die Hard on a
ship"), Passenger 57 ("Die Hard on a plane"), Speed ("Die Hard on
a bus"), and Cliffhanger ("Die Hard on a ain"). But few
measure up to the explosive brilliance of Die Hard. Director John
McTiernan develops the action at a fast and furious pace,
culminating in some fantastic set-pieces on the top of the
building, in the elevator shaft, and in the building's outer
plaza. Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza's script, based on
Roderick Thorp's novel Nothing Lasts Forever, is smart, funny,
and full of memorable lines (among them "Welcome to the party,
pal!" and of course "Yippee ki-ay, motherf*****"), and the cast
is perfection, especially Rickman as the cunningly evil villain,
and Willis, whose McClane character--bloodied, beaten, d,
and barely breathing, as he battles both bad guys and
bureaucrats--is someone audiences could genuinely cheer for.
Directed by Renny Harlin, the 1990 sequel, Die Hard 2
(unofficially referred to as Die Harder), doesn't match the level
of the original, but it's still an exciting thrill ride with some
terrific action sequences. One year after the Nakatomi incident,
McClane (Willis) is awaiting his wife's (Bedelia) plane to arrive
at Dulles Airport when he stumbles onto a plot to paralyze the
entire airport, including all the planes trying to land. It's up
to McClane to take on the cadre of bad guys despite all the
bureaucrats standing in his way, and before the planes run out of
fuel and c to the ground. The cast includes William Sadler as
rogue man Col. Stuart, Dennis Franz as the latest
bureaucratic cop to get in McClane's way, Richard Thornburg as
the annoying reporter from the original movie, John Amos as a
special-forces commander, early-in-their-career John Leguizamo
and Robert Patrick as terrorists, and future politician and Law
and Order actor Fred Thompson as the head of air traffic control.
The third film in the series, Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995),
was again directed by John McTiernan and uses a different
concept. The villain (played by Jeremy Irons) cls to have
ed bombs all over New York City and gives John McClane
(Willis), now alchoholic and separated, a series of clues to try
to track them down. Along the way, he's aided by, and eventually
teams up with, a Harlem shopkeeper named Zeus Carver (Samuel L.
Jackson). The interplay between Willis and Jackson is engaging,
but better suited to the Lethal Weapon franchise it was
previously considered for, and not till the end does the movie
return to the familiar McClane-vs.-villains-showdown format.
Twelve years after Die Hard with a Vengeance, the third and
previous film in the Die Hard franchise, Live Free or Die Hard
finds John McClane (Bruce Willis) a few years older, not any
happier, and just as kick-ass as ever. Right after he has a fight
with his college-age daughter (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a call
comes in to pick up a hacker (Justin Long, a.k.a. the "Apple
guy") who might help the FBI learn something about a brief
security blip in their systems. Now any Die Hard fan knows that
this is when the assassins with foreign accents and high-powered
weaponry show up, telling McClane that once again he's stumbled
into an assignment that's anything but routine. Once that
wreckage has cleared, it is revealed that the hacker is only one
of many hackers who are being targeted for extermination after
they helped set up a "fire sale," a three-pronged cyberattack
designed to bring down the entire country by crippling its
transportation, finances, and utilities. That plan is now being
put into action by a mysterious team (Timothy Olyphant, Deadwood,
and Maggie Q, Mission: Impossible 3) that seems to be operating
under the government's noses. Live Free or Die Hard uses some of
the cat-and-mouse elements of Die Hard with a Vengeance along
with some of the pick-'em-off-one-by-one elements of the
now-classic original movie. And it's the most consistently
enjoyable installment of the franchise since the original, with
eye-popping stunts (directed by Len Wiseman of the Underworld
franchise), good humor, and Willis's ability to toss off a quip
while barely alive. There was some controversy over the film's
PG-13 rating--there might be less blood than usual, and McClane's
famous tag line is somewhat obscured--but there's still has
plenty of action and a high body count. Yippee-ki-ay! --David
Horiuchi