no doubt about it and to a lot of people and bruce willis will always be john mcclane and for good or bad . in the film that make him a star and or at least get him out of tv work and bruce willis be new york native cop john mcclane and come down to la to see his estranged wife and family for the christmas holiday . then hans ( alan rickman and in one of his best evil performance ) and a group of thief pose a terrorist who look european male model and an obnoxious black computer hacker show up and take over the building and try to rob the place . only mcclane can stop them and and his only real support come from sgt . al powell ( play by the dad from tv family matter ) . calamity and chaos and mayhem ensue a mcclane and the foreign thug tear the building apart try to kill each other in the ultimate battle of all american cowboy hero and sophisticated eurotrash and the idiot cop and fbi get trip over themselves to help out . base on the novel by roderick thorpe . bonnie bedelia be bruce wife and and the late alexander godunov be karl and who vendetta with bruce turn personal . bonnie do well a the sympathetic wife with a bad haircut and godunov and in a role very different from his debut part a an amish farmer in witness and be surprisingly menace in spite of his pretty boy look . of course and it help that his career a a ballet dancer give him more dexterity than the usual hulking henchman . his knock down drag out brawl with willis be one of the best . alan rickman comment that he do not view han a the villain and but more a a guy who have make certain choice in life and want certain thing in life and go after them . all the same and alan be the perfect villain for bruce wise crack mcclane and who be neither weak nor super human . bruce work very hard on this film and allegedly do a lot of his own stunt and really bring a lot of life and warmth to a character who could very easily have be just another grim loner . it a shame that he have to spend the majority of his career try to get away from this character ( kind of like sean connery try to live down his glory day a james bond ) . and to think that arnold schwarzenegger and sylvester stallone and burt reynolds and richard gere all turn this part down ( probably well that they do ) . sadly and the appeal of the mcclane character be lose in # 3 die hard represent with a vengeance and where mcclane have become a grim and burn out and wasted loner . a big part of the power of die hard be that there be no easy escape and very few place to run and very little cheating a director john mctiernan put it . and it true that very few moment require you to suspend logical disbelief and although we do have to question if it possible to successfully pull of the stunt where bruce jump off the building with a hose wrap around him . so grab the popcorn and get ready for the madness of die hard . this be actually one of the few action film my family and i enjoy watch together . this be actually film at the 20th century fox plaza .