Die Hard (1988)

In director John McTiernan's action-thriller blockbuster about the robbery of the 40 story high-rise Plaza Towers of Nakatomi's corporate headquarters in Los Angeles (Century City) - a group of heavily-armed terrorists invaded the company's Christmas Eve Party, and attempted to steal $640 million in negotiable bearer bank bonds inside the building's vault:

• the breathtaking, tense, nail-biting action sequences on the 30th floor of the 40-story high-rise corporate headquarters building
• the pitting of off-duty, New York City cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) against villainous internationalist terrorist Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman); the clever scene of McClane's alert or warning to the terrorists that he was armed with the machine gun taken from Tony (Andreas Wisinewski) - McClane sent Tony's corpse (with a Santa hat) in an elevator to the 30th floor with an X-mas message from McClane scrawled on his sweatshirt: "Now I Have a Machine Gun - Ho-Ho-Ho".
• McClane's crawling through a narrow ventilation shaft and his quip: "Now I know what a TV dinner feels like"
• McClane's famous line: "Yippee-kai-yay, motherf--ker!"
• the scene of his walking barefoot on shattered glass when he fled through the EXIT door
• after saving the hostages, McClane's daring jump and dangling from the rooftop via a firehose, in order to escape and avoid the building's detonation, and his nerve-biting effort to disattach himself from the hose that was pulling him downward
• the final tense showdown in which Gruber was holding bloodied McClane's estranged wife Holly (Bonnie Bedalia) hostage; by getting into a laughing fit with Gruber (and his thug assistant Eddie (Dennis Hayden)), he was able to distract the men - and suddenly reached for a concealed gun taped onto his back; he shot and killed Eddie in the forehead and wounded Gruber in the shoulder - the bullet also broke the window behind Gruber

Gruber's Plummet to His Death

• McClane blew on the barrel of his pistol, and joked: "Happy trails, Hans!", as Gruber stumbled backwards through the broken window pane; Gruber grabbed for Holly's arm and metal wristwatch-band, but McClane released or unclasped the band, and watched as Gruber, still threatening with a gun in his right hand, unforgettably fell backwards to his death 30 stories below