Just as the success of Jaws led to a raft of ocean panic flicks (remember Orca?), the blockbuster success of the original Die Hard led to its own string of unlicensed knockoffs conforming to a formula commonly referred to as Die Hard In A…. These stories usually pitted a lone-wolf hero against a fleet of bad guys, all of them trapped in a single location. With the release of Olympus Has Fallen, aka Die Hard In A White House, this weekend, we looked at some of the more noteworthy clones.
1. Under Siege (Die Hard On A Battleship): The high-water mark (no pun) of Steven Seagal’s action movie career was his turn as a former Navy SEAL (working as a cook) defending a decommissioned warship from a group of mercenaries led by Tommy Lee Jones.
2. Air Force One (Die Hard On A Plane): Harrison Ford plays a U.S. president who escapes into the crawlspaces and vents of Air Force One when it’s hijacked by a group of Kazakhstani terrorists led by Gary Oldman. The film also fits pretty neatly into the “GIMME MY FAMILY BACK!” cycle of Harrison Ford films. Released, incidentally, the same year as the Nic Cage vehicle Con Air, which can also be accurately described as Die Hard On A Plane.
3. Sudden Death (Die Hard In A Hockey Rink): Jean-Claude Van Damme stars as a Canadian-born firefighter who takes it upon himself to dismantle a terrorist plot inside Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena during the final Stanley Cup game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Chicago Blackhawks. The film was conceived by the wife of then Penguins owner Howard Baldwin, which is pretty funny. Making a movie where your arena gets wired with explosives doesn’t really seem good for the franchise.
4. Speed (Die Hard On A Bus): One of the smaller-scale Die Hard rips, Speed put Keanu Reeves in full action hero mode as a “deeply nuts” LAPD officer who has to keep a city bus moving above 50 miles an hour lest it explode, killing everyone inside.
5. Paul Blart: Mall Cop (Die Hard In A Mall): He’s a cop. He’s in a mall. There are bad guys. We vaguely remember a nacho-eating contest? What more do you need to know?
