Die Hard

1988

John McTiernan's action picture drops an off duty New York cop into a Los Angeles high rise on Christmas Eve, minutes after a crew takes the building and everyone in it. He is barefoot, unarmed, and the only person above the lobby who is not a hostage. Bruce Willis plays John McClane and Alan Rickman plays Hans Gruber in his first film role, with Bonnie Bedelia and Reginald VelJohnson as the beat cop on the radio outside. Nearly every American action movie for the next fifteen years got pitched as some version of it.