DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE (1995)

John McClane is Back!  After successfully defeating terrorists at Nakatomi Plaza in the first movie and Dulles Airport in the second movie, McClane (Bruce Willis) is once again working as a NYPD cop.  Hung over and once again on the outs with his wife, he has been called back into duty to track down a mysterious new threat who's not only planting explosives around the city but is specifically asking for HIM.  This threat is named Simon (Jeremy Irons) and he apparently wants to play games with McClaine while he terrorizes the public, even threatening to blow up a local school if our hero doesn't do what he wants on time.  And just as things are heating up, John gets mixed up with a local store owner named Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson) who not only saves his life but ends up being summoned to play these same games.  The two team up to save the city....but what are they saving it from exactly?  The plot just thickens from there as Die Hard director John McTiernan (The Thomas Crown Affair, The Hunt for Red October) returns to direct this well-liked and hugely popular third installment which came out thirty years ago this spring.  Yippee-Ki-Yay.....indeed! 

Host & Editor: Geoff Gershon
Producer: Marlene Gershon

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Transcript

DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE - 1995

Directed by John McTiernan

Starring Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Irons, Larry Bryggman, Graham Green, Anthony Peck, Nicholas Wyman, Kevin Chamberlin, Sam Phillips, and Colleen Camp

Genre: Action Thriller (Audio clip)

For the first 70 minutes, this is a very fun Die Hard sequel! John McClane is back on the case chasing down the exploits of another supposed terrorist who's wreaking havoc...although this time, he scrambling around Manhattan as opposed to the more limited confines of an airport or skyscraper. This time, he also has help...Zeus, a savvy electrician/locksmith from Harlem played by Samuel L. Jackson, SUPER-hot off of Pulp Fiction which came out just about eight months prior and a little film called Jurassic Park a couple of years prior. AND this time, he has a new adversary but with a familiar name...Gruber, as in Simon Gruber played by Jeremy Irons who was hot off of winning his Oscar as Claus Von Bulow a few years prior.

And it starts out promisingly as a battle of wits between McClane/Zeus and Simon who's playing an ongoing game of "Simon Says"...get it?? :) Bombs are going off and/or being threatened to go off if our two protagonists don't successfully answer each riddle laid out to them by Simon. The first half of this movie generally works even though we don't even see Irons' Gruber until about 45 minutes it...but that's cool because the film has done a canny job of building some mystery around him up until that point. It's fun to see Willis and Jackson playing off each other as they scramble around the city....and then it's also fun to see Gruber's full-on plan revealed and even to see Irons strutting around reveling in the cleverness of his plan, which is actually a pretty audacious robbery of a LOT of gold! 😉

However from this point on, the film starts to feel less and less like a Die Hard movie - it's not bad but it starts to resemble more of a hybrid between a generic '90's Bruce Willis action thriller with a typical '90's terrorism thriller. The characters are still pretty fun but they seem to be just getting more wrapped up in an endless parade of increasingly improbable action sequences with no resolution - McClane actually surfs on top of a truck in an aqueduct at one point...the "Simon Says" conceit is pretty much dropped for the last hour and the screentime seems to be spread more evenly among more different characters. We spend more time with other NYPD cops who are trying to find a mysterious bomb who are played by Graham Greene and Colleen Camp - I like both actors but they're really not given enough to do to leave a mark. 

But the last hour just watched as a more generic '90's action film is perfectly fine - it just loses some of the cleverness that made the first film and even the second film (to a lesser extent but come on....that landing light conceit at the end was pretty cool!) so special. The final brief action climax in Nova Scotia always felt kind of shoe-horned in to me but in years since, I've learned why: it wasn't the original ending. The brief helicopter shoot-out between McClane and Gruber which we see in the theatrical version actually replaced a MUCH cooler final sequence between just the two of them featuring a pure battle of wits....and it's available to watch online. :) My suggestion would be to just skip the last ten minutes of this and just watch that ending instead...

Best Needledrop (best song cue or score used throughout runtime of film): 

One thing that this entry in the franchise brings back which I LOVED about the first one was for a solid chunk of runtime, we’re actually following villains and even celebrating their clever heist plot…..which kicks off once we follow Simon Gruber’s gang as they take over the Federal Reserve around the half-way point.  (Audio clip) 

And also LIKE that first film where composer Michael Kamen incorporated a popular theme into the score – Beethoven’s “Ode To Joy” – Kamen returns as composer once again and brings in a different one and it's even going a bit more arguably obscure even though it’s not quite as old as Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.  And that would be the American Civil War anthem – first written and performed in 1863 by Patrick Gilmore – “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” It kicks off best just as one of his henchman makes an observation that this underground bunker which they’ve penetrated resembles Fort Know and…..this is probably Jeremy Iron’s best moment in the movie, he sly smiles back at that guy and then makes a witty clarification.  Just SUCH a fun moment and the music only helps punctuate it. (Audio clip) 

Wasted Talent (most under-utilized talent involved with film):

Speaking of Jeremy Iron’s….this also leads to my biggest disappointment with this film.  Now to be fair, any layman watching this film for the first….without prior knowledge of the villain and maybe at least SOME appreciation of that first movie might now have felt the same way as I did.  You see I LOOOOVED the first Die Hard, rewatched it obsessively for years…..Hans Gruber was always an all-time villain for me.  And just a couple of years later, I fell in love with Jeremy Irons’ Oscar-winning performance in Reversal of Fortune, playing Claus Von Bulow.  It was a steady HBO rewatch for me in the early and mid ‘90s. (Audio clip) 

So0000…you can imaging my utter delight first hearing in I think around the summer of ‘94….that they would soon be starting production on Die Hard 3….John McTiernan was coming back to direct….AWESOME…..Jeremy Irons was joining the franchise to play the villain and this was also RIGHT around the same time his vocal talents were dominating the big screen playing Scar the villain in the original The Lion King…..AND……hold on here…..Irons was going to play Hans Gruber’s BROTHER seeking revenge?!? BOOM….seriously now looking back on all of the vaunted announcements regarding Star Wars (I WAS pretty jazzed to hear that the star of Trainspotting was playing Obi-Wan a few years later, Christian Bale announced for Batman was an exciting one for me too) or Batman or James Bond or any vaunted IP….I honestly cannot think of ANOTHER casting announcement in my lifetime which had me MORE excited than the prospect of Jeremy Irons joining the Die Hard franchise to portray Hans Gruber’s brother!  And I likely had this knowledge for almost a year before the movie came out…..

So needless to say, well….it’s treated as a twist to be revealed around 40% into the movie….I think I would have been better off NOT knowing.  Jeremy Irons received billing above the title like SLJ but there was really NOTHING in the marketing that I can recall alluding to him being a Gruber…and I think in retrospect, I would have been better off NOT knowing in advance.  Because…disappointingly this whole angle of the story is not only treated as a sorta-red hearing but we also don't see much interaction between McClane and Gruber even towards the end which I remember felt like SUCH a letdown when I first saw this...this was THE face-off between McClane and the brother of the mastermind he vanquished in the first movie and fair or not, it just never lived up to the hype for me.  Irons is good too, he's clearly having some fun with this role and he LOOKS great – just so lithe and slithery - but he's just not fully utilized...not even as much as Bill Sadler was as the master villain in Die Hard 2. 

Trailer Moment (scene or moment that best describes this movie):

And for me, the peak of the action for this movie is when we first see McClane throw a monkey wrench into Gruber's plans by encountering some of his goons laying siege to to the Federal Reserve in what had to be one of the most oddly abrupt yet satisfying action sequences of this entire franchise. This occurs about an hour in….(Audio clip) 

McClain finds himself going down a crowded elevator with four of them each disguised as cops or security guards....he realizes one of them is wearing the badge of someone he actually knows, cracks a joke to distract them....and then pulls out his gun...and what follows is barely 40 seconds of threats, gunshots, and blood spurting all over him. It's quick and brutal and just about as Die Hardish an scene you're going to see. ;) It also CLEARLY inspired a much more elaborate version of this same kind of cramped elevator action nineteen years later in Captain America: The Winter Soldier...which also was the highlight of that particular movie. (Audio clip)

MVP (person most responsible for the success of this film):

Going back through my reviews of those first two Die Hard movies, I selected Alan Rickman as the MVP for the first one, Bruce Willis as the MVP for the second one….yeah if I’m being honest, I DON’T think that Willis is quite as good in this one as the first two….and I wanted more Irons.  But I have to say that my biggest take-away THIS time was the sheer audacity and execution of using New York City as the “isolated” setting for this entry in the franchise…there’s a NUTSO sequence about a half hour in when McClain and Zeus are driving in a taxi through Central Park to get to the next point of Simon’s “scavenger hunt” of bombings.  I honestly don’t know how they shot this but just such a dazzling sequence. (Audio clip) 

And that’s ALL McTiernan – at his best, his directing style would resemble PEAK Hitchcock but on cocaine and even more impressive second unit work: those gnarly fights in the jungle in Predator, the rooftop back-and-forth in the FIRST Die Hard….the Central Park sequence here and a few others serve as a reminder that when you wanted to have a seemingly ordinary protagonist facing EXTRAORDINARY physical challenges, there were filmmakers who were better at putting that on-screen.  For once again delivering the action goods, John McTiernan is the MVP. (Audio clip) 

Final Rating: 3.4 stars out of 5 

Happy 30th Anniversary to not only a solid Die Hard movie overall but very likely the last GOOD Die Hard movie.  A lot of it holds up very well. 

Streaming on FXNOW, Prime Video, & hulu

And that ends another SIMON SAYS review!