8. Die Hard
Though two late sequels have systematically removed everyone that made John McClane so iconic - doing their level best to reduce him to a cypher, and a bloated caricature - Bruce Willis' vested one-man army remains among the upper echelons of character creations of the past four decades. He was charismatic, egotistical, flawed and vulnerable, and most of all, Willis' performance made him a different type of action hero to what we were used to. Throughout the first three films, McClane never grew - he was irresistibly stunted, and a seemingly willing victim of cruel circumstance, and his own suitability to taking down villains hell-bent on ruining the holidays. And while the fourth and fifth films misjudged this entirely, and attempted to adapt and update McClane for new audiences (and whole new markets in the case of A Good Day To Die Hard,) it was the enduring familiarity of the character, and his situations that made the initial trilogy so successful. The high-points are numerous, and all come down to Willis' performance (as well as some generously brilliant villains in the cases of Hans Gruber and Simon particularly) and while the character has become bloated and unnecessary now, that trilogy was responsible for reinventing the action hero when he first appeared. And though that might be deemed faint praise, considering the genre, there once was time when traditional actioners were the comic book movies of their time.
The Uncharacteristic Low Point? Well, ignoring the stupid fourth, and the horrendous (and not Die Hard-like) fifth, the only issues really come with Die Hard 2, which isn't as entertaining, or as exciting as the two that book-end it, primarily because it lacks as enduring a villain as the Gruber brothers.