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August 12, 2003
Joshua Foss
During Game Seven of the Stanley Cup finals in Pittsburgh, Joshua Foss (Powers Boothe) and his group of terrorists storm the VIP Booth where the Vice President is watching the game with other dignitaries. After immediately offing one innocent victim, Foss states his demands: a sum of money exceeding $1.5 billion. After rerouting and transferring different amounts of it to hide the true destination, the final take will be about half a billion dollars. Not a bad pay day.
How could Foss be able to not only take the VP hostage, but also outwit the Secret Service and get the upper hand? While his background remains a mystery, the safe bet is that Foss is a former Secret Service agent who either got fired or went rogue, taking advantage of the knowledge he picked up working for the government and using it to earn a little bit of severence pay. He is extremely well-prepared, with team members all over the arena, outside the arena, and even working for the other side. A former agent's still gotta have friends in the Service, right?
Meanwhile, the token Die Hard "guy caught in the middle" is firefighter Darren McCord (Jean-Claude Van Damme), attending the game with his son and daughter. Once he realizes what's going on, he does his best to fight off bad guys and use his arson investigation experience to locate and defuse Foss' bombs, which have been strategically placed around the arena to bring it down, killing everyone inside.
As for Foss, he's very intelligent, stern, cool, and he's got a sense of humor. But you also have to respect a villain for adjusting his approach given the different people he has to deal with. He threatens the Vice President with killing everyone in the arena. He threatens McCord with killing his daughter. He threatens McCord's daughter Emily with a mouth full of spiders. You gotta know who your audience is to elicit the right response.
In the end, Foss nearly escapes after fleeing in disguise to his waiting helicopter. But in all the plans he drew up for this operation, he didn't count on a martial arts trained firefighter with a major parental streak to show up and spoil his plans.
INTELLIGENCE - 8: With his Secret Service experience, he is well-trained and well-prepared.
POWER - 6: In decent physical shape. Also has great aim with a gun and isn't afraid to use it.
VILENESS - 8: Women, children, hockey fans: nobody is safe from Foss.
SWAY - 8: Read my analysis of his different threats above to see why he's so good.
PURITY - 8: Only cares about the money and getting himself out of the arena. The less guys of his that are left, the bigger share he gets.
PHYSICAL - 4: Nothing special, except that he also knows how to make a basic disguise for himself.
TOTAL: 42
Posted by Destro at August 12, 2003 09:27 AM