Like Roy and Lethal Weapon 's Murtaugh, and contrary to the audience's expectations, John McClane is a family man first, and not the slave of Heroic duty. John's symbolic impotence and emasculation continue throughout the film. The arrival of the terrorists banishes him, shoeless, to airducts, elevator shafts and uncompleted floors. He has been contained and domesticated.
Cops have rules.
There are other times in the film when John has the advantage and declines to shoot or loses his gun. He is also helpless to prevent the deaths of two hostages. These repeated inadequacies and failures of John and his friends are not consistent with other '80s Hard Body Heroes. But John McClane's vulnerability, his ability to succeed though marginalized, are a part of his victory. A key scene that subverts John's simple construction as a Hard Body Hero is when John is holed up in a bathroom, tending to his significant wounds.