Die Hard

When the SWAT team is trying to break into the front door of the tower they first try picking the lock to no avail.

Then we see a SWAT team member carrying a metal cutting torch attempting to cut through the lock.

The SWAT team would have just broken the glass to get in and not waste time using a metal cutting torch to cut the door lock.

The glass is obviously breakable as shown in the same scene when the terrorists fire upon the SWAT team.

There is no ambulance in the truck when the terrorists first arrive, but Theo drives an ambulance out of the truck near the end of the movie (error acknowledged by filmmakers).

The eyes of the dead terrorist in the elevator close just before Gruber touches his face.

The Christmas tree on the table that Karl hides behind is lying down before it gets knocked over by McClane later.

The first and second rocket attacks both blow out the same window on the APC.

McClane swings through the window on the hose and lands on his back.

In the next shot, he's on his chest.

In the first close up where Hans is hanging from Holly's wrist, there is blood on Holly's face from John's arm.

In the second close up this blood is missing.

Obvious stunt double for McClane (missing a tattoo on the shoulder) during the fight with Karl.

Obvious stunt double for John McClane during the fight with Tony.

When McClane is having a gun fight on the roof of the building he slides down a slide with his machine gun in the right hand; the next shot he has the gun in the left hand.

Squibs are visible on the metal door that McClane goes through when Karl shoots at him during their final fight.

Early in the film, shortly after the terrorists have launched their assault, McClane glances out a window and sees a woman in the building across the street.

However, previous and subsequent long shots of the building he's in show that there are no other buildings close by.

When McClane goes to the roof to get the hostages off, he is not wearing his undershirt, but in the view from the helicopter when he is firing into the air, you can see him wearing a white undershirt.

Several times during transmissions with the two-way radios, characters interrupt each other, which would be impossible given the type of radios they were using.

When jumping off the roof at Nakatomi Plaza just before it explodes, you can clearly see John McClane's "rubber shoes" that were used to protect his feet.

While the people are being held hostage, he is supposed to be barefoot.

His support wire is also visible in addition to the fire hose.

Just after we are first introduced to Johnson and Johnson, Hans is seen walking on the top floor in, looking up and shining his flashlight.

In the Forward Tracking Shot, just before he climbs the wall, the shadow of the boom mic is visible just above his shadow on the far right of the screen in the widescreen version of the film.

Al's patrol car has had the spotlights removed, but in the overhead shot of Marco's body crashing through the windscreen, there are dual spotlights visible.

Trim on the rear doors of Al's patrol car disappears and changes style.

John's tank top changes from white to gray in various scenes.

When John is first hanging from the hose from the roof, he ends up right next to a band of stone between floors, in the next shot he is directly in front of a window.

When Karl steps out of the elevator after Hans and John's conversation, he appears on the right, then left, then right side of the hall.

In the fight between John and Karl, John jumps onto Karl's back and knocks him onto his stomach on the rolling cart.

In the next shot, however, Karl is lying on his back.

When Karl's brother comes to apprehend John, we see a close-up of his weapon when he flicks the light switch.

The charging handle is forward (the bolt is closed).

In the next shot, however, it's back, and the bolt is open.

We later see him slap the handle forward.

Near the end of the movie, when McClane walks through the large hall (where the hostages had been held captive earlier), you can see a shadow of someone behind the Christmas tree just after the tree falls.

Right after John states his name as John and is told to hold tight, the drill on the safe is restarted and the sparks start coming out before the drill starts moving.

Also the sound of the drill is at a way higher RPM than the drill itself is moving once it does start moving.

In the shots that we see of John McClane when he asks the hostages where his wife has been taken to by the terrorists, you can see the pyrotechnic charges taped to the roof that are about to be used.

When the helicopter swings overhead and a soldier uses his machine gun, you can see the charges detonating and the fact that they are charges being used to simulate M-60 bullets hitting the roof.

After the terrorists blow the roof up, and the hostages are running down the stairs, one of the hostages gets hit in the head with a softball-sized rock and it doesn't faze him.

When John is first chased by a terrorist, up on the floor still under construction, he turns on and off a radial arm saw.

The very distinct sound of the blade running against either a kerf in the fence or a kerf in the table can be heard.

However, when the terrorist finds the saw, it can be clearly seen that the blade is running free.

When the swat team is trying to enter the building and they fail to pick the lock, a swat team member clearly lights a cutting torch to burn the lock.

A few scenes later you can clearly hear a grinding sound indicating a drill or grinder is being used to try to break the lock.

When Theo updates Hans on the police activity, he reports that "the four assholes [are] coming in the rear in standard two-by-two cover formation.

" The SWAT team members are not in '2x2 cover', they're all running together single file (more or less).

When Argyle first learns of the Nakatomi takeover, he is pouring a glass of whiskey just off screen with the appropriate sound effect.

However, when the glass reappears on screen a moment later, it is empty.

As Hans falls out of the window the window breaks and there is no glass on the sides of the window.

Then by the next shot you can clearly see glass on the left side of the window.

Prior to climbing down an elevator shaft staircase, McClane (who is supposed to be barefoot) is clearly seen wearing shoes as he jumps through an elevated service door.

McClane's shirt goes from white and then to a dark grey and then to a mixed color or dirt, blood and white.

Although a reporter refers to the terrorists radios as CB radios, the walkie-talkie is either a VHF or UHF, not HF radio, therefore not capable of transmitting in the 27.

065MHz emergency channel of the Citizen's Band (Channel 9) When McClane drops the monitor with the C4 down the elevator shaft, he has time to jump away from the door as the explosion rises.

The gases from C4 actually expand faster than the speed of sound, so his face would have been melted off.

When reporter Richard Thornburg is listening to his police scanner, he hears Officer Powell screaming for backup.

At this point the red lights on the front of the scanner are continually blinking from left to right.

However, on this particular model scanner the lights would cease blinking, and remain solid on a single channel as long as it was active.

When Hans reaches out to turn the dead man's head in the lift, the man's head moves to the left before Hans has actually touched him.

The corpse also blinks.

As in most movies, the C-4 explosive is packaged incorrectly.

Real 1.

25 pound blocks of C-4 are packaged in dark green (olive drab) plastic wrapping with yellow markings.

When Takagi speaks to the employees at the party they erupt in loud applause.

Looking at the employees, none are clapping their hands.

In the battle scene with the police, Alexander's first shot with the anti-tank gun breaks the glass.

However, the second shot also breaks the same pane of glass.

Channel 9 (CB distress channel) is monitored by Radio Emergency Associated Communications Teams (REACT), not the police department.

If someone were calling for help on Channel 9, they would talk to a REACT operator, who would then call the authorities.

Either way, it would not be an FCC violation.

As John is fighting Karl towards the end of the movie, Karl's harness is clearly visible as he is dragged across the room by the chains which are supposedly round his neck.

When Karl shoots the second security guard after first entering the building, you can see the outline of the fake blood packets under his shirt.

When Argyle rams Theo's van, the front end of the limousine is thoroughly wrecked.

When he comes through the gate at the end of the movie, it's more or less intact.

(The gate itself also would have caused more damage than is visible.

) After McClane fires in the air and it shot at but not hit by one of the FBI men, the other agent Johnson (the white guy) says "Swing around again - I'll bag this little bastard" and both agents are looking toward the camera as if the roof is to their left.

But the roof of the Nakatomi building can be seen through the window *behind* them, to their right, and the next jump cut indeed shows the building in front of them, not behind.

Police officers allowed to carry firearms concealed carry because of their state law enforcement license.

Police officers are allowed to operate within the borders of their state.

The fact that he is in a plane traveling from New York to Los Angeles takes him out of the state and his police license is n/a out of state and in effect his right to carry concealed his n/a.

Federal agents and state and local Law Enforcement officer are allowed to carry on commercial flights, but on official police business (i.

prisoner or VIP escort) Proper paper work and verified ID required.

Hans repeatedly and pointlessly pulls the trigger of the Beretta and the gun appears to be empty.

An experienced user of an automatic pistol would naturally pull the slider back manually as there may be bullets in the magazine.

However, before McClane hands him the gun, he clearly racks the slide after putting in a new magazine.

If there were any rounds in the magazine at all, one would've already been in the chamber, which an experienced user of handguns would know.

Several times over the course of the film, it is demonstrated that the windows of the Nakatomi building all contain safety glass - glass that is coated with a polymer thatA) like the windshield of an automobile, will break into tiny fragments or rounded beads, and B) will remain a continuous sheet due to its special coating, even though the glass within is shattered.

Near the end of the movie when Hans is shot, however, the window he breaks and falls through, unlike all the other previous windows, shatters as a normal untreated pane would do - breaking into large dangerous shards instead of the normal safety glass fragments.

When the APC blows up and you are viewing the outside view of the vehicle exploding you can clearly see a camera man standing in the window where the rocket was shot from.

Twenty minutes passes by - the time it took for John to get from the airport to the Nakatomi Plaza to join the party - and the orchestra is still playing exactly the same piece.

When the terrorist car first pulls up to the Nakatomi Plaza, the noise from the brakes is not consistent with the movement of the vehicle.

After Gruber kills Takagi, the mess that it made on the window is virtually gone in the next shot.

After John kills the first terrorist and John is collecting stuff from him, the terrorist's glasses appear and disappear between shots.

After Powell did his sweep at the Nakatomi building to report the "wild goose chase", the dispatcher did not follow proper procedure and respond to Powell's transmission, when Powell said, ".

Everything here is okay, over.

" Dispatchers always have to echo or respond to the last transmission.

When Harvey at the News desk is grimacing back at Thornberg's "Eat it, Harvey!", Harvey then gets his five-count cue to go live on the air.

The last two counts (and sometimes the last three counts) are always silent and are never called out loud.

Before the second rocket attack on the police armored vehicle, the flames from the first rocket attack, which occurred only a few seconds prior, are all but extinguished.

The flash and fire from the second rocket attack on the police armored vehicle originate from under the vehicle - something impossible from a top-down rocket attack which struck the roof of the vehicle, and furthermore, a frame-by-frame analysis of the shot shows no shell whatsoever hitting the vehicle.

The $640 million worth bearer bonds that are snowing on the disaster scene after Holly and John escape are nothing but blank pieces of paper.

When Powell is driving away from the Nakatomi tower, the dead terrorist that John tossed out the window crashes through a pane glass windshield, which went out of use as early as 1919.

All vehicles, including Powell's police car, have laminated windshields and there are no deadly shards as with pane glass.

When Hans is holding onto Holly's watch out of the window and then falls, he is shot in slow motion but the paper that is falling in the background is moving at normal speed.

When the terrorists are first walking in as a group looking very serious and sinister, the one on the far left is on a collision course with the wall! The camera cuts away just before he walks into it.

In the beginning, while at the party, it's mentioned the time is 5:40 p.

on Christmas Eve.

While Argyle is driving John to Holly's work site at presumably the same time, it is very much daylight.

In LA, on Christmas Eve at that time, it would be dark already.

Much of the "word play" between" McClane ('Bruce Willis' (qv)) in the building and Sgt.

Powell outside made reference to 'Roy Rogers (I)' (qv), by calling each other "Roy" and with McClane shouting "Happy Trails" (Roy Rogers' theme song) at the terrorists.

However, the phrase "Yippee Ki O" to Hans is line more associated with 'Gene Autry (I)' (qv) than with Roy Rogers.

John's vest is white when he enters the vent system and dark green when he exits.

This is not, as some think, a result of accumulated dirt.

When John is searching the body of Karl's brother, in one shot the terrorist's legs are straight, but in the next shot, they are curled to the left.

When McClane fist arrives at the Nakatomi building, he is told to search for his wife's name in the database.

When he clicks "G", Holly's name comes up with her last name spelled "GennEro".

When he clicks on her profile, it is spelled "GennAro".

It is spelled with the "E" on her office door as well.

When John and Karl are fighting, Karl shoots John in the back.

Later when John jumps over Karl the shot from behind does not show any blood.

When John is in the elevator shaft listening to the terrorists speak he writes their names down on his hand with a felt tip pen, but the names disappear for the rest of the movie.

At the end of the film Hans is holding onto John's wife's wrist by her Rolex watch (which was mentioned in the dialog early in the film).

To release Hans to fall to the ground John flips the clasp on the watch and it falls from her wrist allowing Hans to fall.

Rolex watches do not have such a clasp.

They are a continuous loop, and are merely loosened for removal by a clasp which effectively increases the size of the loop.

The strap is shown to be a non continuous piece.

Holly's office is used as the command for Hans Gruber.

Early on, the office appears to be located down the hallway with the door on the right hand side of the office, such that Hans would not be able to see Holly and the rest of the hostages from inside.

When Hans realizes that Holly is married to John, the office then appears to be a corner office with the door on the left hand side, giving Hans a direct and unobstructed view of Holly.

Holly's office actually has a long window on the left side and a second door that opens out into the main atrium, and the desk is angled so that Hans can look out through either door, accounting for the two different shots used.

This is only apparent in the wide screen version.

When the hostages are sent up to the roof, the blonde lady in the gray dress is shown walking up the stairs and turning left onto the roof twice.

Gruber says "Schiess den Fenster" ("shoot the window").

The correct German term would have been "Zerschiess das Fenster".

After Hans and Karl shoot out the glass, Karl is furious that McClane eluded them, whereas Karl should have actually been able to track down McClane easily by following the bloody footprints he would have left from the huge gashes in his feet.

When John first enters the lobby of the Nakatomi building, the Christmas tree is unlit, even though it's Christmas Eve and the company party is in progress upstairs.

When Hans and the other terrorists enter the lobby just a few minutes later, the tree lights are on.

Near the end of the movie when Karl was faking being dead, he would not have been placed in a body bag with fully loaded weapons.

They would have been removed as evidence.

When John lowers himself into the elevator shaft from the strap attached to the tactical weapon, the room he enters from is well-lit.

When the shot alternates to the view from the shaft, that room is dark.

When Sgt.

Powell asks the security guard (terrorist posing as security guard) if he can take a look around the building.

At the counter Powell is leaning on, the reflection of a giant stage lamp can be seen.

When John is talking to Sgt.

Powell about his family (after eating the Twinkie), he's holding the radio in his left hand and his wallet in his right hand, looking at pictures of his kids.

In the close-up shot of the wallet, both of John's hands can be seen holding the wallet.

When the officers are first trying to enter the building, Uli (Gruber's thug played by Al Leong) is seen just biting into a Nestle Crunch candy bar.

Seconds later, he is seen again but his candy bar has become a Mars Bar.

During the 'shoot the glass' scene, the muzzle flashes frequently do not match up with the sounds of gunfire.

Marco, one of the robbers/terrorists, dies more than once.

While running along a table, he's shot by McClane, and dies at 0:56:15.

A few minutes later, he's alive and well at 1:02:47.

His finally denouement comes at 1:36:00, in a glass-filled shootout.

At the end of the movie we see the building exploding from a distance.

The sound of the explosion is at the same time the explosion happens but since light travels faster than sound, it should have been at least a few seconds between the explosion and the sound.

When the limousine crashes into the ambulance in the parking garage, an overhead shot of the action shows a red and blue flasher atop the ambulance.

In LA City, only police and other law enforcement carry blue lights.

All other emergency vehicles such as fire trucks, ambulances and paramedics trucks carry primarily red and sometimes red and white, but never blue.

The FBI sends two helicopters to Nakatomi, but just before the John-on-the-roof sequences, the second helicopter disappears and is never seen again.

On the VHS and DVD box for this movie, the description says, "Armed with only a service revolver and his cunning, McClane launches his own one-man war.

" McClane uses a Beretta Model 92 semi-automatic pistol, not a revolver.

When McClane grabs the Beretta taped to his back, he brings it down into a two-handed grip.

In the very next shot he shoots Hans with the gun in his left hand and his right arm behind him.

When Argyle rams his limousine into the broadside of the ambulance, you can see that the lettering contains a misspelled word.

Instead of "Los Angeles City Fire Department," the lettering reads "Los Angeles City Fire Deparment.

" When Gail Wallens talk with Dr.

Hasseldorf about the hostages situation, he speaks of "Helsinki Syndrome".

The correct name is "Stockholm Syndrome".

However, this was a joke satirizing the incompetence of so-called TV "experts", as the following lines ridicule Johnson for his mistake.

When the electric company worker is telling the downtown dispatcher to "turn off grid 2-12", he does not release the speak button when the dispatcher responds.

Buildings do not have codes that identify themselves, only street addresses and building numbers, like a house.

When Hans tells the other terrorist to have the fire department cancel the alarm, that's all he needed to say; presumably, the "building code" part was add just to make Hans sound smart.

"Building code" refers to the code with the building was constructed, not the physical address.

The other news reporter in the van tells Dick (Thornberg) that she has McClane's vital statistics, which would have been utterly useless and are not kept in any personnel record files, only confidential medical records that the media cannot access.

Early in the movie after McClane kills the first terrorist, he sends the body down to the 30th floor in the elevator with the Santa hat on it.

Hans says, "No this is something else," and the dead terrorist's eyes are open but when Hans reaches to turn the dead man's head, his eyes close.

When the phone system was being bypassed by the terrorists, Karl jumps the gun and begins cutting at the pipes with a chainsaw.

In several angles a cord can be seen attached to the saw.

The sound we hear is from a 2-stroke gas chainsaw, not an electric one.

What could be another big gory vein of action is mixed up with realistically raw, unkempt fight scenes and developed, relatable leads at the head of the drama.

John McTiernan's second mainstream film manages to amazingly top an outstanding previous effort, Predator. This even better film will resonate will audiences even more than Predator.

This is the best action movie I have ever seen this will keep you on the edge of your seat with lots of action suspense and a few plot twists.

'Die Hard' is an energetic action fare, that gets almost everything right. The pacing is proper, the presentation is top-notch, the action sequences are great and the performances are up-to the mark.

Review #2 of "My Top Ten Favorite Movies" Reviews In 1988, when Die Hard came out, my parents and a family friend went to see it in New York City in a big theater. The movie was so crowded, they all did not even get to sit together.

If someone were to force me to tell him/her my favorite movie of all time, I would most likely say Die Hard. In my opinion, this is as close to a perfect action movie you can get.

An NYPD cop John McClane comes los Angeles to celebrate Christmas with his wife & childrens. But instead of celebration he found himself in hijacked skyscraper.

Action movie Bruce Willis 1988.

Action movie Bruce Willis 1988.