Death Ave

10 ‘Die Hard’ clones ranked by the screenwriter of ‘Die Hard’

A return to the immobile ‘in a [blank]’ concept, this time set in a hockey stadium familiar from earlier thrillers like Two Minute Warning and Black Sunday, the movie distinguishes itself with the choice of a disgraced fire marshal as its hero, which makes for an even better underdog than Die Hard’s beat cop. The decision to give Jean-Claude Van Damme’s character a kind of ‘handicap’ in the form of his heavily accented English is also wryly noted, prefiguring Skyscraper’s prosthetic leg gag by 24 years, and the film earns a respectable 3 Twinkies for its Die Hard-iness. - Steven E. de Souza