Robert Costanzo is raised as a recognizable face from Total Recall and many other films, along with Mark Boone Jr. of the special-forces crew, later in Sons of Anarchy.
The award is given jointly to Don Harvey and Art Evans, instantly recognizable actors whose names were unknown.
Naked tai chi; the That Guy ensemble; "I taught him everything he knows"; the profane reporter brush-off; "How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?"; airports at Christmas
The line about having taught the villain everything he knows is a favorite action trope, spun into a First Blood-style bit about a rogue colleague turned terrorist.
A reporter asking a colonel (transcribed "Colonel Stewart") for a few words and getting a two-word profane brush-off as he walks past her is chosen and jokingly recommended for office use.
The line about the same thing happening to the same guy twice is praised for self-awareness and noted as sampled in Positive K's I Got a Man.
Airports at Christmas are chosen for the chaotic, nostalgic vibe of parkas and drinking before flights, though the same behavior also counts as aged worst.
McClane leaving his car at the curb, drinking and spotting trouble across the terminal is contrasted with a real traveler watching a Bulls game with a bet on it.
Baggage-area fight; first McClane-Lorenzo meeting; painters shootout and ramp standoff; ejection and parachute escape; runway fight and fuel-trail landing
First listed: McClane fighting two men in a restricted baggage area, with Vondie Curtis Hall; the cluttered, climbable set is praised and the airport raised as a possible Apex Mountain for airport movies, though it was not actually shot at Dulles.
The first McClane-Lorenzo meeting is quoted, with both actors bringing it; it sets up the trope of an official who is unimpressed by a proven hero, riffed on through an imagined Sully Sullenberger being brushed off.
The metal-detector insult to Carmine is noted as a likely ad-lib whose joke nobody fully understands.
The paintball-style shootout, with sinister painters (including Robert Patrick) ignored by the airport SWAT team, and the suspenseful moving-ramp standoff are nominated.
The plane crash is called the craziest and most horrifying scene in action-movie history; with some 220 deaths quickly moved past, it is judged memorable rather than rewatchable.
After 9/11 such a scene would never be made; the movie is one of the most violent mainstream films, mixing sight gags with a British plane crash that kills about 200 people, after which everyone at Dulles keeps drinking and waiting, and making the passengers unlikable British travelers is called a weird choice.
McClane pushing the crate, taking on Esperanza on the transport plane and ejecting leads to a shot of him parachuting at the camera, called one of the better action-movie shots, though the villains oddly fail to finish him.
The final fight with John Amos and Stuart ends with the plane blown up on an improbably long runway and controllers using the fire trail to guide landing planes.
Additional favorites: the news helicopter pilot saying he is crazy but not that crazy, repeated blueprint-reading scenes with Art Evans, and the William Atherton-Bonnie Bedelia first-class feud.
