Top Notch Thriller

Rating: 10/10 (14 February 2013)

Basically, "Die Hard" is the movie that solidified Bruce Willis' dreams of super-stardom. Twenty five years later, Willis is still on top billed in most of his movies. This surefire Twentieth Century Fox franchise has yielded four sequels, including the latest "A Good Day to Die Hard." In the first film, Willis played a 'loose cannon' New York cop visiting California. He had been a member of the NYPD for eleven years when he flies out to see his wife, Holly, who works with a Japanese corporation at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles. He arrives for the Christmas Party, meets Holly, gets into an argument with her and then gets separated from the main party with his wife. Everybody is taken by surprise when a German terrorist and his minions storm the Nakatomi Towers. They take everybody hostage, but they slip up and miss John McClane. The terrorist leader, Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman of "Galaxy Quest"), wants to steal the $640 million in negotiable bearer bonds in Mr. Takagi's company safe. Along the way, Gruber has a person duel with our hard-headed hero. They chase him around the building and at one point, he wraps a fire hose around his waist and flies through a window with a machine gun in his fist sputtering rounds. This is one terrific actioneer.