10 Great Action Movies to Watch If You Love Die Hard

When Die Hard arrived in 1988, it helped reshape the modern action movie. Directed by John McTiernan and starring Bruce Willis as NYPD officer John McClane, the film took the familiar action-hero formula and gave it a more vulnerable, relatable lead. Trapped inside Los Angeles’ Nakatomi Plaza while criminals hold hostages, McClane becomes their only real chance of survival.

More than three decades later, filmmakers are still borrowing from the movie’s winning formula: an isolated location, overwhelming odds, a memorable villain, and a hero forced to improvise.

Some of the movies that followed were obvious variations on Die Hard. Others took the basic idea in completely different directions. From airplanes and battleships to dystopian towers and jungle battlefields, these films are excellent choices for anyone who enjoys the suspense, action, and underdog appeal of John McClane’s original adventure.

Executive Decision

Executive Decision takes the confined-location suspense of Die Hard and moves it onto a passenger jet.

After terrorists hijack an airliner and smuggle a deadly chemical weapon aboard, the military launches a dangerous operation to stop them. A special forces team uses a stealth aircraft to secretly board the plane in midair, then works from the cargo hold while attempting to disarm the weapon and regain control of the aircraft.

Instead of relying on a single hero, Executive Decision builds its suspense around teamwork. The cramped airplane setting creates constant tension, and the threat of a catastrophic attack gives the story enormous stakes.

For viewers who enjoy the pressure and claustrophobic atmosphere of Die Hard, it is a strong military-thriller variation on the formula.

Dredd

The 2012 film Dredd could easily be described as Die Hard set inside a dystopian future.

Karl Urban plays Judge Dredd, one of Mega-City One’s toughest law-enforcement officers. Dredd and rookie Judge Anderson enter a massive residential tower to investigate a murder connected to drug lord Ma-Ma. When Ma-Ma seals the building and orders her gang to kill the judges, the pair must fight their way through floor after floor of criminals.

The similarities to Die Hard are obvious, but Dredd pushes the concept into much darker territory.

Its futuristic setting, relentless violence, and comic-book style give the movie its own identity, while the tower-block battle creates the same trapped-behind-enemy-lines feeling that made John McClane’s adventure so effective.

Sin City

Bruce Willis returned to the hard-boiled action genre in 2005 with Sin City, based on Frank Miller’s graphic novels.

Willis plays Basin City detective John Hartigan, an officer trying to protect Nancy Callahan from a dangerous killer. After being framed and imprisoned, Hartigan eventually returns to the streets and risks everything to keep Nancy alive.

Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, with Quentin Tarantino contributing as a guest director, Sin Citycombines crime, noir, revenge, and comic-book storytelling.

Hartigan is very different from John McClane, but the two characters share an important quality: both are battered, determined men who continue fighting because they believe protecting someone else is worth the sacrifice.

For Die Hard fans who want something darker and more stylized, Sin City is an excellent choice.

Speed

Speed gave audiences another memorable Los Angeles action hero when Keanu Reeves starred as LAPD SWAT officer Jack Traven.

A bomber rigs a city bus to explode if its speed drops below 50 miles per hour. After Traven boards the moving bus, he must help keep the passengers alive while police search for a way to stop the bomber.

Rather than trapping its hero inside a building, Speed puts everyone inside a vehicle that cannot stop moving.

That simple change gives the movie its own identity while maintaining the ticking-clock suspense associated with Die Hard. Traven also works well as a successor to McClane: capable, determined, but constantly forced to solve unexpected problems as the situation becomes more dangerous.

The movie feels particularly close in spirit to the larger-scale action of Die Hard with a Vengeance.

Air Force One

Air Force One takes the Die Hard formula all the way to the White House — or more accurately, to the president’s airplane.

Harrison Ford stars as U.S. President James Marshall, whose tough stance against terrorism makes him the target of militants who seize Air Force One. After convincing the attackers that he escaped the aircraft, Marshall secretly remains aboard and begins fighting back while hostages are held throughout the plane.

The comparison is unavoidable: it is essentially Die Hard aboard Air Force One.

What separates the movie is Harrison Ford’s performance and its unapologetically patriotic tone. Between the action sequences, dramatic speeches, and presidential stakes, Air Force One became one of the most entertaining action thrillers of the 1990s.

Under Siege

If Air Force One is Die Hard on an airplane, Under Siege is Die Hard on a battleship.

Steven Seagal stars as Casey Ryback, a former Navy SEAL now working as a cook aboard the USS Missouri. When terrorists seize the ship and capture its crew, Ryback becomes one of the few people left who can fight back.

The attackers are after the ship’s nuclear weapons, forcing Ryback to move through the vessel and eliminate the terrorists before they can carry out their plan.

The battleship gives the movie a great action setting, while Tommy Lee Jones delivers an energetic villainous performance.

Ryback is far more of a traditional action hero than the vulnerable John McClane, but Seagal’s martial-arts abilities give Under Siege its own style.

Dirty Harry

Long before John McClane entered Nakatomi Plaza, Clint Eastwood helped define the tough, independent police hero with Dirty Harry.

Released in 1971 and directed by Don Siegel, the movie follows San Francisco police inspector Harry Callahan as he hunts a serial killer known as Scorpio.

Callahan is willing to push rules and boundaries in his determination to stop the killer, creating one of cinema’s most famous hard-edged police characters.

Dirty Harry does not follow the same story structure as Die Hard, but its influence can be felt throughout the action and crime genres. Both Harry Callahan and John McClane are stubborn law-enforcement officers who rely heavily on instinct and refuse to quit when confronted by dangerous criminals.

For anyone interested in the movies that helped pave the way for Die Hard, Dirty Harry is essential viewing.

Taken

Two decades after Bruce Willis became an unexpected action star, Liam Neeson experienced a similar career transformation with Taken.

Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a former CIA operative whose daughter is abducted while traveling in Paris. Mills travels into the city’s criminal underworld and uses his intelligence, training, and considerable combat skills to track down the people responsible.

The movie turned Neeson into a modern action star and created its own hugely influential formula.

Much like Die Hard, Taken demonstrated that an action hero did not have to fit the traditional muscle-bound stereotype. Both films built their appeal around experienced but believable protagonists who become extremely dangerous when placed in desperate situations.

Predator

One year before John McTiernan directed Die Hard, he delivered another landmark action movie with Predator.

Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Dutch Schaefer, leader of an elite military team sent into a Central American jungle on a rescue mission. The soldiers soon discover that something far more dangerous is hunting them: an alien warrior equipped with advanced weapons and camouflage technology.

As the creature eliminates the team one by one, Dutch is eventually forced to face it alone.

Although Predator and Die Hard take place in completely different environments, they share McTiernan’s talent for building suspense around a confined group of characters facing an overwhelming enemy.

One is an urban hostage thriller. The other is a jungle survival story. Together, they represent two very different versions of the classic 1980s action movie.

The Last Boy Scout

For Bruce Willis fans, The Last Boy Scout may be one of the closest things to a spiritual relative of Die Hard outside the franchise itself.

Released in 1991 and directed by Tony Scott, the movie stars Willis as Joe Hallenbeck, a burned-out private investigator whose personal life is falling apart.

After a woman he has been hired to protect is murdered, Hallenbeck teams up with her boyfriend, former professional football player Jimmy Dix, played by Damon Wayans. Their investigation eventually uncovers a conspiracy connected to professional football.

Hallenbeck has much of the same blue-collar attitude that made John McClane appealing. He is sarcastic, exhausted, flawed, and constantly beaten down, yet somehow keeps going.

The chemistry between Willis and Wayans also gives the movie a strong buddy-cop element.

For viewers looking for another Bruce Willis character who captures some of McClane’s battered-but-defiant personality, The Last Boy Scout is one of the best places to start.

Why the Die Hard Formula Still Works

The lasting influence of Die Hard goes far beyond movies about terrorists taking over buildings.

Its real formula is about placing a hero in an environment where escape seems impossible, giving the enemy an overwhelming advantage, and forcing the hero to survive through intelligence, improvisation, and determination.

That idea works inside skyscrapers, airplanes, buses, battleships, futuristic towers, and even jungles.

That is why filmmakers continue returning to the concept — and why audiences continue watching.

John McClane may have been trapped inside Nakatomi Plaza in 1988, but the action-movie formula he helped popularize has never really left Hollywood.