10 Action Films That Could Have Been the Next Die Hard

Sudden Death

1995 · Action, Thriller · 1h 51m

Van Damme fights a penguin mascot, and the film plays it completely straight.

Game Seven, with a bomb on the clock

A fire marshal ends up in goalie pads during Game Seven of the Stanley Cup Finals, and that isn't the strangest thing that happens in Sudden Death. Jean-Claude Van Damme is the fire marshal. He takes his two kids to the big game in Pittsburgh, and while seventeen thousand fans are watching hockey, a team of terrorists takes over the arena. They've got the Vice President locked in a luxury box, and they've wired the building with bombs timed to go off when the final buzzer sounds. So there's a clock on the scoreboard and a clock on the bombs, with one guy running through the back corridors trying to beat both.

Van Damme gets into a brutal fight with somebody wearing the team's penguin mascot costume. The film never treats it as a joke, and you'll be laughing anyway.

The villain is a slick former government agent who handles the hostage job like a business deal, and he gives the movie more bite than you'd expect from a Van Damme picture.

Van Damme’s best of the nineties

Sudden Death came out right in the middle of the Die Hard copycat wave and sank at the box office. Fans of nineties action have been catching up with it ever since, and it's easily the best movie Van Damme made in that decade.

If you only know him from kickboxing tournaments and the splits, this one shows he could hold down a big Hollywood thriller.

Where to watch (US)

Checked 18 Oct 2026

Full details →

Passenger 57

1992 · Action, Thriller · 1h 24m

It runs about eighty-four minutes and doesn’t waste a single one.

The one passenger they didn’t plan for

Passenger 57 runs about eighty four minutes, and it doesn't waste a single one of them. Wesley Snipes is an airline security expert who's lost his edge after a personal tragedy. He boards a commercial flight to start a new job, and it turns out the same plane is carrying a notorious terrorist being flown to Los Angeles to stand trial. The terrorist has people on board. Within minutes they've taken the plane, and the one passenger who knows how to fight back is the man they didn't plan for.

This was Snipes' first shot at carrying an action movie on his own, and he looks completely at ease. He's calm and funny for long stretches, so when he finally cuts loose, the fights hit harder. A young Elizabeth Hurley turns up as one of the hijackers, which is a nice surprise if you've never seen it.

Snipes also gets the line everybody remembers. Always bet on black. Written down, it looks cheesy. Coming from him, with that grin, it turned into one of the most quoted action lines of the early nineties.

A catchphrase, and no sequel

Made on a modest budget, the film nearly tripled its money in American theaters. Hollywood had a star and a catchphrase sitting right there, ready for a franchise, and the sequel simply never happened.

Few early nineties action movies get in and out this cleanly, and Snipes has rarely looked more like a born leading man.

Where to watch (US)

Checked 18 Oct 2026

Full details →

White House Down

2013 · Action, Thriller · 2h 11m

It arrived a few months after Olympus Has Fallen, with the same plot and a much lighter touch.

The Die Hard that knew it was Die Hard

Hollywood made the same movie twice in one year, and the one that flopped is the one more people should be watching. White House Down came out a few months after Olympus Has Fallen, and both films have terrorists seizing the White House. The difference is tone. Olympus is grim. White House Down knows it's a Die Hard movie and leans all the way in.

Channing Tatum is a Capitol Police officer who's just been turned down for a job with the Secret Service. He's brought his daughter on a White House tour to try to win her back, and that happens to be the day a heavily armed team storms the building. Jamie Foxx is the President, and the two of them end up on the run together through the halls of the most protected house in the world.

Tatum spends a good part of the movie in a white tank top, which feels very deliberate. The film wants you to see a little John McClane in him. Foxx and Tatum trade jokes the entire way through.

Why it flopped while the grim one got sequels

The budget was around a hundred and fifty million dollars, and it struggled to make that back worldwide. That ended any talk of a sequel, while the darker movie went on to get two.

White House Down is badly underrated. Put the two side by side and you'll come away wishing this was the one that got the sequels.

Where to watch (US)

Checked 18 Oct 2026

Full details →

Cliffhanger

1993 · Action, Adventure · 1h 53m

One midair cable crossing cost a million dollars and set a Guinness record.

A million-dollar stunt on a real mountain

One stunt in Cliffhanger cost a million dollars. A stuntman crossed between two jets in midair on a single cable, thousands of feet up, and it went into the Guinness Book of Records as the most expensive aerial stunt ever performed. That should tell you how seriously the filmmakers took the mountain.

Sylvester Stallone is a mountain rescue climber who walked away from the job after a rescue went terribly wrong. He's pulled back for one more call, a distress signal from high in the Rockies. The call is a trap. A gang of thieves has crashed a plane carrying a hundred million dollars in cash, the money is scattered across the peaks, and they need someone who knows the mountain to help them find it.

John Lithgow leads the thieves, and he's having a ball as a sneering villain with a smooth British accent. You want Stallone to get to him a little faster.

The mountains are the Italian Dolomites standing in for Colorado, and they look incredible. The climbing feels real because somebody really was hanging off that rock.

The Dolomites standing in for Colorado

Audiences loved it. Cliffhanger made more than two hundred and fifty million dollars around the world and put Stallone right back on top after a rough run of comedies. No action movie of the early nineties used its location better.

Go back to it now and the climbing still makes your palms sweat, when you know what's coming.

Where to watch (US)

Checked 18 Oct 2026

Full details →

Dredd

2012 · Action, Sci-Fi · 1h 35m

Karl Urban never takes the helmet off. Not once.

A sealed tower, two cops, one drug lord

A two hundred story apartment block gets sealed from the inside, two cops are trapped near the ground floor, and the drug lord who runs the place is waiting at the very top. Dredd is about as simple as an action movie gets, and it's all the better for it.

Karl Urban is Judge Dredd, a cop in a ruined future city who acts as judge on the spot. He never takes the helmet off. Not once. Urban does everything with his jaw and that gravel voice, and somehow you always know what he's thinking.

Lena Headey is the drug lord, and she's frightening because she's so calm about everything. Her drug is called Slo-Mo, and it makes the user feel like time has slowed to a crawl. The movie shows you what that feels like in these shimmering slow motion shots, and they look gorgeous in the middle of all the violence.

Dredd cost somewhere around forty million dollars, and it didn't make that back in theaters. Plenty of people skipped it because of a goofy comic book movie from the nineties with the same character. On home video it finally found its audience, and fans have been campaigning for a sequel for over a decade.

The helmet never comes off

It's one of the best comic book movies of its era.

If you like your action mean and stripped down, put this on and you'll understand why people are still asking for more.

Where to watch (US)

Checked 18 Oct 2026

Full details →

Under Siege

1992 · Action, Thriller · 1h 43m

Gary Busey spends part of the movie in a dress.

A navy cook with a bad attitude

A navy cook with a bad attitude is the last thing a gang of hijackers expects to run into, and in Under Siege, he's the only man standing between them and a battleship full of nuclear missiles. Steven Seagal is the cook. He's on board the USS Missouri for its final voyage, and during the captain's birthday party, a crew of mercenaries takes over the ship.

Leading them is Tommy Lee Jones as a rogue former CIA man, dressed like an aging rock star and clearly enjoying every line he gets. Gary Busey is his partner on the inside, the ship's own executive officer, and Busey goes so far over the top that he spends part of the movie in a dress.

Those two villains are the reason the movie works so well. Seagal stays cool and deadly down in the galley, while the pair of them are up on deck losing their minds.

Two villains out-crazying each other

Under Siege made over a hundred and fifty million dollars around the world. It became the biggest hit of Seagal's career, and critics liked it more than anything else he ever made. A sequel moved him onto a hijacked train a few years later, and it never came close to the original.

Seagal never got a better showcase. Watch it again for Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey trying to out crazy each other, and you'll wonder why every Die Hard copy didn't hire two villains.

Where to watch (US)

Checked 18 Oct 2026

Full details →

Air Force One

1997 · Action, Thriller · 2h 4m

It made over three hundred million dollars worldwide and never got a sequel.

The President stays on board

Air Force One made over three hundred million dollars around the world, and it still never got a sequel. Harrison Ford is the President of the United States, and when terrorists hijack his plane, he skips the escape pod. He stays on board, hides in the cargo hold, and starts picking them off one at a time.

Gary Oldman leads the hijackers, a group of hardline nationalists demanding the release of their imprisoned general. Oldman is terrifying in it. He's twitchy and furious and completely unpredictable, and every scene between him and the President's family feels like it could go wrong in a second.

Glenn Close is the Vice President back in Washington, trying to hold the government together while the cabinet argues about what to do. Cutting between the plane and the war room gives the movie a second clock to race against.

Ford was in his mid fifties and still completely believable throwing punches in a cramped airplane. He also gets the line that sold the movie, three words that ended up in every trailer. Get off my plane.

Oldman at his scariest

Ford's president is the toughest one Hollywood ever put on screen. The ending wraps up so neatly that nobody ever found a way back in, which is a shame, because Ford clearly had more in him.

Watch it now for Oldman, who's even scarier than you remember.

Where to watch (US)

Checked 18 Oct 2026

Full details →

The Long Kiss Goodnight

1996 · Action, Thriller · 2h 1m

The script sold for four million dollars, the most anyone had paid for a screenplay at the time.

A schoolteacher with a deadly past

The script for The Long Kiss Goodnight sold for four million dollars, which at the time was the most anyone had ever paid for a screenplay. You can see where the money went.

Geena Davis is a small town schoolteacher with no memory of anything before eight years ago. She's built a happy life with her young daughter, until a knock on the head starts bringing back some very strange skills. Like how to handle a kitchen knife a little too well.

Samuel L. Jackson is the cheap private eye she hires to dig into her past. Together they figure out she used to be a government assassin, and that the old version of her is still in there, waiting to come back out.

Davis gets to play two completely different women in one movie, and watching the switch happen is a blast. Jackson is hilarious as the guy who keeps realizing he's in way over his head.

Like Die Hard, it's set at Christmas, and it has that same mix of jokes and brutal violence. It cost around sixty five million dollars and barely made more than that worldwide, which killed any hope of seeing Charly Baltimore again.

The best female-led action movie of the nineties

The Long Kiss Goodnight might be the best female led action movie of the nineties, and it's badly underrated.

If you count Die Hard as a Christmas movie, this one deserves a spot right next to it every December.

Where to watch (US)

Checked 19 Oct 2026

Full details →

The Last Boy Scout

1991 · Action, Comedy · 1h 45m

The script sold for $1.75 million, a record at the time.

Willis at his most bitter

Three years after Die Hard, the man who made John McClane famous tried to do it all over again with a brand new character. In The Last Boy Scout, Bruce Willis is a burned out private detective who used to be a Secret Service agent, until one bad decision wrecked his career. Now he's broke, his marriage is falling apart, and he's drinking his way through every day.

Damon Wayans is a former football star who got thrown out of the league for gambling. The two of them get pulled into a murder case connected to a plot to bribe politicians into legalizing betting on pro football. Neither likes the other, and the insults start flying from their first scene.

The script sold for one point seven five million dollars, a record at the time, and you can hear why. Almost every line is a wisecrack, and some of them are so nasty you laugh out of shock.

It did fine at the box office, nowhere near Die Hard numbers, and the plans for more Joe Hallenbeck quietly went away. Critics thought it was too cruel. Fans of the genre have been arguing the opposite ever since.

Mean, and proud of it

The Last Boy Scout is about as mean as buddy action movies get, and the meanness is a big part of its charm.

If you've only ever seen Willis as McClane, this is him at his most bitter, and somehow his funniest.

Where to watch (US)

Checked 18 Oct 2026

Full details →