Die Hard remains one of the most beloved action movies of all-time. It was the film that made Bruce Willis a massive star. While most action heroes to that time were giant muscle-bound men or guys with giant guns and a ton of military experience, Die Hard made the hero an everyman who just wanted to survive.
It started something new in Hollywood as more average-looking men and women put into extraordinary situations where they had to rely on luck as much as brains to survive. With Die Hard ushering in a new style of action hero, here are 10 great action movies to watch if you love Die Hard.
LETHAL WEAPON (1987)
When looking at the best action movies of the ’80s, many movie fans love two movies — Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. Both films were different for the era, one about an NYPD detective trapped in a building in Los Angeles where his wife was part of a group held hostage.
In Lethal Weapon, Mel Gibson is a former special forces soldier who joins the LAPD but is suicidal after the death of his wife. This gives both movies very unusual heroes for fans to follow, and both are the best of the best of the ’80s era.
THE ROCK (1996)
While Bruce Willis seemed like a different kind of action hero in Die Hard, he was at least a police detective. However, The Rock took it even further with Nicolas Cage starring as Dr. Stanley Goodspeed, a chemical weapons specialist. He did team up with a true action hero in Sean Connery’s John Mason.
The movie is basically Die Hard in the prison, Alkatraz, as Goodspeed and Mason are sent into Alkatraz to try to find and disarm some chemical bombs that some former Marines threatened to launch into San Francisco. This set up Cage as an action star in several ’90s action flicks.
SPEED (1994)
Keanu Reeves went from a great comic actor in the Bill & Ted series to an action star in Speed. This movie is easily described as Die Hard on a bus. The film saw Keanu Reeves as an LAPD SWAT officer named Jack Traven, who is contacted by a terrorist who explains he planted a bomb on a bus.
The twist is that Jack has to keep the bus going at 50 mph or higher or the bomb is triggered, and the bus will explode. Sandra Bullock also stars in her breakout role. There was also a sequel with Bullock, although Reeves did not return.
THE LAST BOY SCOUT (1991)
Bruce Willis was back in 1991, and this time, it was a buddy cop movie where he teamed with comedian Damon Wayans, proving that Willis could now play the new traditional action hero with someone even less likely than he was to take on the other role.
Wayans was a former football star named Jimmy, who reluctantly teamed with former Secret Service agent Joe (Willis), who left the position disgraced. Both men try to gain revenge against a criminal organization who killed Jimmy’s girlfriend, who was under the protection of Joe at the time.
TAKEN (2008)
Released in 2008, Taken stars Liam Neeson as a former CIA operative named Bryan Mills, who learned that people from a child sex ring kidnaped his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace). Mills has a specific skill set, and that includes hunting down, torturing, and killing the men responsible for his daughter’s abduction.
There was also a sequel where Bryan and his wife were kidnapped as revenge for his actions in the first movie. In the third movie, his wife is murdered and frames the murder on Bryan, and he has to figure out who killed his wife and why.
BEVERLY HILLS COP (1984)
Beverly Hills Cop is very similar to Die Hard in one significant way. Much like John McClane was an NYPD cop in Los Angeles trying to stop some bad guys outside the protection of the police, in Beverly Hills Cop, Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is a Detroit cop who heads to Beverly Hills to solve the murder of his partner.
For many years, Beverly Hills Cop was the most successful R-rated movie of all-time until The Hangover broke its box office record. There were two sequels to the hit action movie.
DIE HARD: WITH A VENGEANCE (1995)
Fans who loved Die Hard got a sequel that was almost a duplicate of the original, except Die Hard 2 replaced the building John McClain was in with an airplane, adding to the tension. However, for something completely different, the third movie in the franchise brought back McClain in the very entertaining and highly underrated Die Hard with a Vengeance.
The movie co-starred Samuel L. Jackson as an electrician and shop owner who reluctantly reams with McClain when Simon (Jeremy Irons), the brother of the bad guy from the first movie, Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) is out for revenge.
UNDER SIEGE (1992)
Through the ’80s and ’90s, Steven Seagal became a consistent action hero in a variety of movies. However, the best film of his career arguably came in 1992, where he starred with Tommy Lee Jones in Under Siege. This movie was described as Die Hard on a battleship.
Under Seige starred Seagal as the cook on the U.S. Navy battleship, the USS Missouri. While just a cook, Casey is the man needed to save the ship when a group of mercenaries led by ex-CIA op Bill Strannix (Jones) takes over the ship.
CON AIR (1997)
Nicolas Cage continued his stint as an action movie hero by starring in Con Air one year after his breakout role in The Rock. The movie was Con Air, and Cage starred as an honorably discharged Army Ranger sent to prison for involuntary manslaughter after killing a drunk man in self-defense.
Eight years later, he is paroled and is on his way back home when inmates hijack the prison transport plane onboard, and it is up to Cameron Poe to stop them and find a way to land the plane and get home safely to his waiting wife and child.
OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN (2013)
The newest movie on this list, Olympus Has Fallen is Die Hard in the White House. The film was the first part of a series that now has three films, with the first the best of the bunch. Gerard Butler stars as former Army Ranger Mike Banning, who formerly led the Secret Service detail for the U.S. President.
When terrorists attack and take control of the White House with the help of former Secret Service agent Dave Forbes (Dylan McDermott), Banning shows back up, and he helps lead a rescue attempt to save the U.S. President.
