"Ha! 72nd and Broadway to Central Park South in three minutes! It's got to be a f**king record."

On a typical morning in New York, a bomb suddenly explodes at a department store in Manhattan's Flatiron District. As the police frantically scramble to assess the situation, a terrorist who goes by the name Simon calls in and demands that NYPD detective John McClane participate in a series of mind games, with the threat of more bombs to come.

The quintessential New York summer blockbuster, John McTiernan's Die Hard with a Vengeance abandons the limited single-location setting of Die Hard in favor of a playground that spans the entirety of New York City. This departure from the Die Hard formula was risky, given that the formula had already proved popular and inspired films such as Jan de Bont's Speed, which was pitched as "Die Hard on a bus." Despite this, the film retains the pleasures of the original through its adrenaline-fueled action and smart writing, which makes even its most minor characters pop. Another of its many delights is the way it revels in its sheer New York-ness. The sequence in which McClane and his reluctant civilian partner Zeus devise ways to complete the seemingly impossible challenge of traveling from One Police Plaza to Wall Street station in half an hour through New York traffic is just one of many moments that demonstrates how integral the city is to the film's identity.