Die Hard: Critic Reviews

The scenes move with such relentless energy and smashing special-effects extravagance that Die Hard turns out to be everything action-genre fans, and Bruce Willis's relieved investors, might have hoped for.

It gets your heart pounding, then makes you hate yourself for it.

It's good, dumb fun.

Inappropriate and wrongheaded interruptions reveal the fragile nature of the plot and prevent it from working.

A serviceable if rather overextended and overblown adventure thriller.

Die Hard is as high tech, rock hard and souped up as an action film can be.

For what it is, this is the top model -- flash, bang, and witty one-liners all included.

In the first half of Director John McTiernan's movie, Willis wears an undershirt. In the second half he gets rid of it. And that's pretty much it for his performance.

Original Bruce Willis violent actioner.

High-tech cartoonish action thriller.

Great pace, great gun battles, great fun.

...remains one of the most entertaining and flat-out thrilling examples of the action genre...

Great escapist action, but it's still nothing more than an action movie %u2013 cinema's version of a nice, tasty hamburger.

The pumped-up, high tech surprise hit of 1988; a triumph of slick direction and lowbrow thrills, marred but not spoiled by a sour aftertaste.

A seminal action film that created an entire subgenre. Super action, but the key to its success is how it effectively pits Willis' common-man hero against Rickman's haughty arch-villain.

A hi-tech thriller with a human heart.

Every so often a movie comes along whose concept sparks a flood of imitators. Die Hard is such a movie.

'A landmark film that breathed life and originality into an area of cinema where only formulas were proven reliable.'

An explosion-movie classic.

Superior star vehicle, but utterly insubstantial.