9 Die Hard Ripoffs That Don't Suck

Die Hard changed action movies forever. John McTiernan's seminal 1988 action thriller remains one of the best action movies of all time, a precision piece of genre filmmaking that's firing on every possible cylinder, from direction to script to performance. So it should come as no surprise that when the film hit theaters (and earned four Oscar nominations), suddenly every studio that wasn't 20th Century Fox needed to get their hands on a blue collar hero of their own, lock him up with a team of terrorists, and send him on an impossible odds mission to save the day. Which means we've seen a whole lot of copycats in the decades since (there's a reason "Die Hard on a [Fill in the Blank] has become a running gag), but while some of them are obvious soulless copies, some are actually pretty damn fantastic or at least super fun films crafted in the tradition of the great American action movie.

Hell, filmmakers are still riffing on Die Hard and if you needed any proof, take a look at your local cineplex this weekend, where Dwayne Johnson will be doing his best Bruce Willis in Skyscraper on the week of Die Hard's 30th anniversary. In honor of the three decade mark, I'm looking back at my favorite action movies that basically just ripped off Die Hard, but made it look good anyway.

Passenger 57

Passenger 57 isn’t just one of the many “Die Hard on a plane” movies, it’s easily one of the best. Wesley Snipes stars as John Cutter, a former secret service agent who turns to training flight attendants in self-defense after the traumatic death of his wife, and finds himself pulled back into the line of duty when he winds up on the same flight as the utterly unhinged terrorist Charles Jane (Bruce Payne), aka “The Rare of Terror”. And boy, he really is a terrifying villain, cruelly dispatching of a hostage after asking for details about his family and threatening, super specifically, to kill a flight attend while raping her (it’s… a lot), which makes it extra satisfying to see him and his men dismantled one-by-one when Cutter comes for his justice.

Snipes’ performance is very on-brand, aka stoic as hell, and he makes John Cutter a bit too self-serious to have the easy charisma and cool confidence of John McClane, but Snipes is one of the greats in his own right and he brings his own brand of swagger to the one-man army tradition. In truth, that's what makes the movie work, because otherwise it's a pretty flat cardboard cutout of Die Hard, lacking the directorial flourish and character beats that made McTiernan's film a classic. However, it's worth noting that Passenger 57 boasts the best one-liner of any Die Hard ripoff: “Always bet on black.”

See also: Snakes on a Plane, Executive Decision, Con Air

Cliffhanger

Sylvester Stallone may have originated a few iconic characters of his own in the 80s-90s action heyday, but he’s also done his version of John McClane more than once. Fortunately, Stallone’s Die Hard ripoffs tend to be pretty damn great. Cliffhanger takes the Die Hard premise and pulls it out of claustrophobic indoor confines in favor of acrophobic snowy mountain peaks where Stallone’s everyman hero is taken hostage by former military intelligence officer Eric Qualen (played by the great John Lithgow in his pre-cuddly days with a fearlessly over-the-top accent) and his band of mercenaries, who plan to steal $100 million from the U.S. Treasury.

Cliffhanger doesn’t just share plot similarities with Die Hard either; the film comes from Renny Harlin, the director of Die Hard 2: Die Harder (arguably the one great Die Hard sequel and definitely the only one that understood what made audiences love John McClane so much.) Harlin stages killer action beats, taking the action from mountain tops to cave tunnels to the iconic third act helicopter fight, and while Stallone can’t quite match Willis’ easy charm, Harlin knows how to play up the qualities that made Stallone one of the action great. Deliciously ridiculous with Fast and Furious levels of superhuman feats, Cliffhanger is one of the essential action movies cut from the Die Hard cloth.

Under Siege

Let’s address this upfront: Steven Segal is what we would call problematic these days. A converted Putin-ite who’s been accused of sexual assault by multiple actresses, Segal is a mess to address these days. But before the controversy, before the string of sub-par DTV releases (and I love a good DTV actioner), Segal was a legit action star and Under Siege is his most beloved movie (and the only one to earn some Oscar nominations.)

The actor stars as ex-Navy seal, current Navy cook Casey Ryback, who finds himself in a mano-a-mano hostage cat-and-mouse with Tommy Lee Jones’ Bill Strannix, an ex-CIA operative who takes control of a ship with the intent to sell the resident Tomahawk missiles and finds himself face-to-face with Segal’s knife-wielding pro. Director Andrew Davis (who would reunite with Tommy Lee Jones for The Fugitive the next year) stages some fantastic fight scenes, including a chef’s special knife fight, but it’s really Jones who makes the movie soar as a fantastic villain in the Gruber tradition.

See also: Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, which is almost as good. And Speed 2, which I think we all know is nowhere as good.

Toy Soldiers

One of the wildest movies on this list by far, Toy Soldiers was ostensibly made for young moviegoers with a cast of teenage heroes led by 80s coming-of-age icons Sean Astin and Will Wheaton, but it also happens to be wildly violent and intense. Astin and Wheaton lead the ensemble cast as troublemaking students at a fancy-schmancy prep school, where Colombian terrorist Luis Cali (Andrew Divoff) takes the students hostage in order to demand his father’s release from prison. When the government’s rescue attempts prove fruitless, the kids decide they’re better equipped to take on the terrorist threat and use their highfalutin education to outwit their captors and save the day. Well, almost. One of the kids definitely gets mowed down with a machine gun. Remember when I said this movie’s weirdly intense?

Aside from the novelty of a film that was apparently made for a target audience that doesn’t exist (An R-rated movie for people who can’t buy R tickets? Brilliant!), Toy Soldiers is a pretty boilerplate Die Hard copy, with some dialogue that’s so generic and on-the-nose it’s almost impressive. But the shock factor and performances go a long way, especially Astin, who gets to play the heartthrob bad boy, pirating calls with a phone sex operator and disguising booze in mouthwash bottles before shit gets real.

Sudden Death

Straight up, Sudden Death does not get enough credit for being one of the most entertaining and enjoyable films of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s career — and that really means something coming from a JCVD loyalist like myself. It also happens to be a 100%, not even a little subtle Die Hard ripoff.

At the height of his popularity, Van Damme round-housed his way through a hockey arena in Sudden Death, re-teaming with Timecop director Peter Hyams for an action-packed, occasionally ridiculous, but always entertaining action thriller that took the Die Hard formula and gave it a dose of crazy pills. Van Damme plays Darren McCord (yes, that last name is a shameless strike in the ripoff category), a former firefighter serving as the fire Marshall at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, where he finds himself on unanticipated active duty when a fired CIA operative-turned-terrorist (Powers Booth) takes the Vice President hostage in the VIP suite. Of course, McCord’s daughter is also caught in the fray, leading the blue collar hero into the thick of action.

Hyams knows exactly what movie he’s making and delivers some wild set-pieces, including Van Damme on ice skates, but the crown jewel is undeniably the Van Damme vs. Penguin Mascot fight, which really just has to be seen to believed. You won’t find me arguing that Sudden Death is one of the best movies of all time and it certainly doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s a criminally underrated piece of popcorn entertainment.

See also: Derailed (actually don't see Derailed, unless you're really devoted to Van Damme.)

Masterminds

Look, we all know Home Alone is the best “A kid plays John McClane” movie, but Masterminds is unequivocally my favorite. I’ll admit to a lot of nostalgia bias on this one since Masterminds was one of my absolute most-loved movies growing up, but the 1997 action thriller holds up shockingly well on a rewatch.

Masterminds stars Vincent Kartheiser as Ozzie, an ex-prep school kid/hacker genius who drops his sister off at his old private school on the day an ill-meaning band of criminals take control of the campus and hold the wealthy children for ransom. Using his very (very) early internet hacking skills and general thirst for disobedience, Ozzie brings down the baddies one-bye-one in a game of cat-and-mouse with kid-friendly terrorist Bentley. Patrick Stewart gives a gleeful performance as the sinister but oh-so-charming Gruberesque villain in this highly self-aware film, delivering a deliciously charming and wicked performance as the security expert who uses his systemic knowledge to undermine every rescue attempt.

Masterminds knows its a Die Hard ripoff (and Hackers while we’re at it, featuring one of the iconically inaccurate hacking scenes in movie history) and makes no bones about it, leaning into the tropes and even delivering some meta on-the-nose dialogue about that very fact, and that’s what makes it so much fun. Director Roger Christian, who later went on to direct the infamous Battlefield Earth adaptation (I know I’m not doing my opinion any favors here) makes it fun and tones down the action expertly to a family-friendly level, subbing bullets for trans-guns, making everything just dangerous enough without abandoning the target audience. Equal parts silly and smart, with a constant quest for entertainment and an anti-establishment attitude, Masterminds isn’t the best Die Hard ripoff, but it’s one of the most faithful and fun.

The Rock

It's Die Hard on Alcatraz! Nicolas Cage gets to be an extra-kooky, super nerdy McClane stand-in in The Rock as Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (what a name!), a chemical weapons specialist who’s recruited to stop a group of rogue Marines who take the entire city of San Francisco hostage (Michael Bay never goes small) by pointing a stockpile of poisoned gas at the US metropolis. But these aren’t your usual conniving baddies — Ed Harris creates a banger of a bad guy with Brigadier General Frank Hummel, who demands the government hand over $100 million dollars from a military slush fund in order to hand it over to the families of soldiers who died in secret during covert missions.

To save the day, Goodspeed has to team with Sean Connery’s imprisoned British national John Mason, who’s spent the last 30 years in lockup and knows his way around the fabled island as the only inmate to ever escape Alcatraz. , and it’s the chemistry between Cage and Connery that makes The Rock such a downright joy to watch. Well, that and the perfectly calibrated Bayhem, which was accessible and adrenaline-pumping without descending into the mind-numbing abyss of Transformers-style indulgence. In comparison to some of the crasser Die Hard ripoffs, The Rock delivers a lot of charm and heart, and remembers to throw in a few laughs along the way, taking the Die Hard formula and fitting it to the film's needs, rather than forcing another action star into the Die Hard mold.

White House Down

White House Down or Olympus Has Fallen? The great debate of our century rages on (at least in my heart) when it comes to back-to-back "Die Hard in the White House" film duo that blasted into theaters in 2013. While I'm personally more inclined to watch Gerard Butler headstab his way to the Oval Office on any given day in the totally ridiculous and bonkers Olympus Has Fallen, for the purposes of this list, I've got to give it up to Roland Emmerich's White House Down, which is the more fun, way less racist and infinitely better lit version. You also get to watch Channing Tatum do his best John McClane (white tank top included, thank you very much) and Jamie Foxx do his best Barack Obama. T

atum plays John Cale, a DC police officer and wannabe secret service agent who’s touring the White House with his daughter (Joey King) when a band of mercenaries led by Jason Clarke’s Emil Stenz, take the tour group hostage and take control of the White House, leaving it up to the everyman hero to save his daughter, the president, and hell, the United States of America.

In Emmerich fashion, White House Down is bloated (131 minutes if you're counting), with an almost painfully draggy third act, but it gets a lot right along the way. It’s so much but it’s also so much fun, with the presidential limo zipping doing donuts on the White House lawn and a very welcome sense of humor in the mix. White House Down has enthusiasm and zeal to spare, and you can feel Emmerich having a blast with it as he brings his balls-to-the-wall destructo-cinema to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

See also: Olympus Has Fallen, obviously.

Speed

Pop quiz, hotshot: Who's the fairest Die Hard copycat of them all?

It almost feels wrong to call Speed a Die Hard ripoff considering Jan De Bont’s 1994 action thriller spawned a subgenre and ripoffs of its own, but there’s no denying the classic McClane DNA in the iconic 90s action movie. The genius of Speed is that it takes the Die Hard scenario and puts it on wheels (and in an elevator and on train!), propelling the action and giving the film an inherent ticking clock that keeps the pulses pounding.

Keanu Reeves is a delight as Jack Traven, an LAPD SWAT officer who goes toe-to-toe (or walkie-to-walkie) with Dennis Hopper’s deliciously vicious bomber Howard Payne, who straps a bomb to a bus and rigs it to go off if the bus slows beneath 50 mph. Look, if you’ve ever been in LA traffic you’d know that bomb would go off in less than 10 minutes, but Speed spins out a thrilling race against time from the concept, including a number of fantastic set pieces and a perfect co-star in Sandra Bullock, who gives the film a delightful levity and charm.

Arguably the best of the bunch, Speed gets everything right that counts. A great script from Graham Yost (heavily written by an uncredited Joss Whedon), a killer villain, a score that keeps the adrenaline pumping (and never gets out of your head), great leads with sparky chemistry, and best of all, an execution that doesn’t just rely on the old Die Hard formula to get the job done, but evolves the genre in its own right.

Collider

9 Kickass Movies That Pretty Much Just Copied 'Die Hard'