First entry in which Bruce Willis/John McTiernan faces off a ruthless terrorist gang in this high-voltage action thriller

Rating: 8/10 (10 May 2020)

Nail-biting action movie about a skyscraper under siege, set in Christmas eve, a NY cop called John MacLane : Bruce Willis, arrives in LA to spend vacation along with his stranged spouse Holly : Bonnie Bedelia. However, this one results to be one of the hostages being held by a gang of nasty international terrorists. Unfortunately, they are kidnapped in the Century City high-rise headquarters of a Japanese Corporation. Soon after, the greatest NY policeman learns the kidnap, and he contends the villain intruder people : Alan Rickman, Alexander Godunov, Art Leong, among others. But terrorists will resort at whatever means to get their purports. " The wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time".
This is very good action movie and considered to be one of the best thrillers masterfully made by John McTiernan with a great professional artistic and technician team. Furthermore, it contains a moving and rousing musical score by Michael Kamen. As well as adequate and atmospheric cinematography by Jan De Bont. A thrilling movie with plenty of noisy action, energetic acting and humor, dealing with a highly trained team of terrorists hijack a vast company when are celebrating Christmas Eve to get even vaster sums of money of its vaults. Based on the novel "Nothing lasts forever" with interesting screenplay from Jef Stuart and Steven Souza. It brings an impossible situation before the tough-cookie, wise-cracking cop goes onto action. As Bruce Willis gives a sympathetic acting as the lone wolf cop whose wife is taken as hostage by a terrorist group, becoming an one-man army fighting desperately to stay alive .Bruce Willis is well accompanied by a fine support cast plenty of familiar faces, some of them to repeat in sucessive installments, such as Bonnie Bedelia, Reginald Vel Johnson, Paul Gleason, Hart Bochner, James Shigeta, Clarence Gilyard, Mary Ellen Trainor, Robert Davi, the deceased Alexander Godunov. And the bad guys have a real fiendishness with special mention for Alan Rickman as an extremely villianous person .
This powerhouse action film was competently directed by John MacTiernan, incuding state-of-art special effects by prestigious Richard Edlund . Director and his team of technicians blast the screen apart, delivering a pretty good film, though overlong. MacTiernan is a nice fimmaker who has made good action films as Nomads, Predator, Die Hard, Die Hard with a vengeance, Secret of Thomas Crown, Medicine man, Rollerball, Last action hero, Basic, among others .

Other films about this spectacular series are as follows : Die Harder 2 by Rennie Harlin with Bruce Willis, Franco Nero, John Amos, Bonnie Bedelia, William Sadler, Dennis Farina, Art Evans. Die Hard with a vengeance with Samuel L Jackson, Jeremy Irons, Graham Greene, Colleen Camp, Fred Dalton Thompson. Live true or die hard 2007 by Len Wiseman with Bruce Willis, Timothy Olyphant, Maggie Q,. A good day to die hard 2013 with Willis, Jay Courtney, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Cole Houser.