- Die Hard (1988)
- Die Hard 2 (1990)
- Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995)
- Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
- June 29, 2007
New York cop John McClane, who has been a cop for 11 years, has just arrived in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve. For the past six months, John's wife Holly and their two kids Lucy McClane and John McClane Jr have been living in Los Angeles without John. In New York, Holly had a good job that turned into a career, and Holly was promoted to a powerful position in the Nakatomi Corporation. The promotion called for Holly to move to Los Angeles to work in the Nakatomi Plaza, a 40 story building. John stayed in New York because he didn't think Holly would make it out in Los Angeles, and that she would come crawling back to him in New York, so John figured that there was no reason to pack his things for the move to Los Angeles. A limo driver named Argyle drives John to the Nakatomi Plaza, and John heads to the 30th floor, where a Christmas party is going on. John gets into an argument with Holly in the office of her drug-snorting co-worker Harry Ellis because Holly uses her maiden name Gennero instead of the name McClane on her nameplate in her office. Holly leaves the room to give a speech. While John is by himself in the office, John is wishing that the argument hadn't happened. A few minutes later, a group of German terrorists led by Hans Gruber and his right hand man Karl enter the building and take everyone hostage on the 30th floor. John is able to avoid being taken hostage because Hans and his men don't even know that John is in the building. John heads to the upper floors, which are still under construction. Hans takes Holly's boss Joseph Yashinobo Takagi to an office, where Hans demands that Takagi give him the computer code key that will allow Hans and his men to start opening the building's safe so they can steal the $640,000,000 in negotiable bearer bonds that are in the safe. Takagi refuses to cooperate with Hans, so Hans kills Takagi, and John witnesses it. Hans tells his technology expert Theo to start working on getting the safe opened, and Theo thinks it'll take a couple of hours to do it. John frantically tries to find a way to alert the LAPD, realizing that the main phone lines in the building have been cut. Once the police do arrive, they prove to be incompetent under the command of arrogant deputy chief Dwayne T. Robinson, so it's up to John to rescue the hostages.
It's Christmas Eve, one year after the Nakatomi Plaza siege that took place in Los Angeles. Lieutenant John McClane of the LAPD is at the Dulles International Airport in Arlington, Virginia, waiting for the flight his wife Holly is on, as their kids are visiting Holly's parents in nearby Washington DC. It won't be easy getting Holly to her parents' house because her mother's car, which John is using at the moment, has been towed. There is also a breaking news story that all of the networks are covering. At the Escelan Airport in the Republic of Valverde, an airplane carrying General Ramon Esperanza has taken off, on course for the Dulles International Airport. Two years ago, Esperanza led his country's army in a campaign against communist insurgents, and it was a campaign that was fought with American money and advisers. Esperanza's fall from power caused ripples not only in his country's recent election, but in the USA as well, when high ranking Pentagon officials were charged with supplying Esperanza with weapons despite the congressional ban, but mounting evidence that Esperanza's forces have violated the neutrality of neighboring countries made Congress withhold funds. Esperanza is accused of replacing those funds by going into the business of cocaine smuggling, and now, Esperanza is being transported to the USA to face drug charges. Using her airplane's phone, Holly informs John that the airplane will land half an hour late...but it'll actually be much later than that. On Holly's airplane, one of her fellow passengers is Richard "Dick" Thornburg, the news reporter who filed a restraining order against Holly after Holly knocked out two of Dick's teeth last year. The restraining order says that Holly is not to be within 50 feet of Dick. The control tower staff, led by chief of air operations Trudeau and his chief engineer Leslie Barnes, is worried about the weather. As one snowstorm system moves out, another one is moving in, which means that all incoming flights are delayed, and Washington DC International airport has just shut down because they're totally iced, and they're sending their incoming flights to Dulles, increasing the tower staff's workload then the control tower's communications systems are crippled by a rogue military unit led by Colonel Stuart, who is a supporter of Esperanza. Stuart and his men are stationed in a nearby church. Trudeau alerts the staff that all aircraft approaching the Dulles sector but not in the Dulles landing pattern are to be diverted to an alternate airport. The rest of the incoming flights, including Holly's, are to hold at the outer markers. Trudeau also mentions that the staff may have just bought itself about 2 hours, and after that, the airplanes that are low on fuel will start falling out of the sky. Stuart calls the tower and says that Esperanza's airplane will be arriving at Dulles in 58 minutes, and that the airplane is not to be met by anyone, and that it will land on a runway of his designation, and at the same time, he wants a 747 cargo conversion, fully fueled, placed at his disposal. The tower staff has 2 minutes to advise the incoming flights to hold at the outer markers, then the staff will be able to receive only, as the ability to send out communications to the airplanes will be disabled. Stuart also says that any attempt to restore the tower's systems will result in deadly penalties. Holly's airplane is one of the 18 airplanes that are circling over the airport, running out of fuel, and that makes John extremely desperate to stop Stuart and Esperanza, and help the airport restore its communications so the airplanes can safely land that is, if he's not slowed down by inept airport police Captain Carmine Lorenzo.
It's a quiet morning in New York City...until a massive bomb explodes in the Bonwit Teller department store, causing several vehicles to flip, and causing several drivers to come to a sudden stop. This throws the NYPD into a frenzy, trying to sort out what's going on. At the station, Inspector Walter Cobb of the NYPD's major case unit gets a call from a man who calls himself Simon. Simon asks for Lieutenant John McClane, and Walter tells Simon that John, who is now an alcoholic, is on suspension. Simon wants John to go to the corner of 138th Street and Amsterdam in Harlem and wear a racist sign. Walter and his fellow officers Joe Lambert, Connie Kowalski, and Ricky Walsh find John, who is now an alcoholic who is seperated from his wife Holly, and they talk to him. Ricky tells Walter that there have been 3 killings in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn in the past two nights, and 14 dump trucks were stolen from a construction yard on Staten Island. John wants to know where the backup is going to be, and Walter tells him that the backup will be on 128th Street, 10 blocks away. John complains that 10 blocks is too far away for the backup to be. Walter tells John that Simon has threatened to detonate another bomb if the police don't do what he says. John wants to know why he's been targeted by Simon, but no one knows why. While John is in Harlem, store owner Zeus Carver rescues John from a black street gang that was beating John up because of the sign. John and Zeus find themselves stuck with each other as Simon continues his antics and forces John and Zeus to work together to do what he tells them, but John and Zeus can't stop one of Simon's bombs from blowing up a subway station, and it turns out that Simon is Simon Peter Gruber the brother of Hans Gruber, the terrorist that John rescued the Nakatomi building from in Los Angeles years ago. The question now is, is this about revenge on John, or is Simon planning something a lot bigger?
NYPD Detective John McClane lives in Brooklyn, and he's now divorced from Holly Gennero, who lives in San Francisco. John has faced some brutal terrorists in his career, but now, he's about to face what may be his most dangerous enemy yet. John, who occasionally does jobs for the United States Department of Homeland Security, receives a call to bring in a hacker named Matt Farrell, because there has been a breach in an FBI computer system. Farrell is one of the many hackers who are suspected in the attack, and all known hackers are to be questioned. But after John gets to Matt's apartment, a group of men show up and try to kill John and Matt, who barely escape with their lives. As it turns out, a group of terrorists led by Thomas Gabriel are systematically shutting down the United States computer infrastructure. They crash the stock market, crippling America's economy. It turns out that Matt knows enough about hacking to know exactly how Gabriel is shutting down the USA. Gabriel, a disgraced former Department of Defense employee, plans to bring the country to its knees, but he doesn't count on John and Matt figuring out what's going on. Gabriel wants John and Matt out of the way, and for John, the situation becomes personal when an enraged Gabriel kidnaps John's daughter Lucy, who is a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Gabriel may think he now has the upper hand on John, but he has no idea how far John is willing to go to rescue Lucy.
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