Die Hard With a Vengeance (DVD 1999)

Series note: Although the Die Hard films obviously follow one another chronologically in the film's universe, they are not really constructed as chapters in a novel. You could watch them in any order, but to give the characters more depth, and make better sense of a couple minor references, I would still recommend watching them in order.

With Die Hard 3, John McTiernan is back at the helm, as he was for Die Hard (1988), and the result is once again a more serious action film (containing some comic relief, of course) with very taut internal logic. In fact, Die Hard: With a Vengeance is so well constructed, so well acted and so well directed that I like it just as much, if not better, than Die Hard.

John McClane (Bruce Willis) is once again separated from his wife, and he's once again living and working as a cop in New York City. As the film begins, he is on a temporary suspension for some never-specified infraction (it works better that it isn't specified, as it enables us to imagine all kinds of crazy things that this gruff character might have done). After a bomb explodes at the Bonwit Teller department store, a mysterious person calling himself "Simon" calls the police taking credit and asking to speak with McClane--or he'll detonate further bombs in crowded areas. They rouse McClane from the aftermath of a drunken stupor.

Mclane shows up at the police station with a hangover, looking haggard. "Simon" is fond of riddles and makes McClane engage in a bizarre game of "Simon Says". The first task is for McClane to head up to Harlem and stand on a street corner in his skivvies wearing a sandwich board that says only, "I Hate Blacks" (using a more inflammatory epithet than "blacks"). Of course, he almost gets killed, but at the last minute, a reluctant savior in the form of a local shopkeeper, Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson), helps save his butt. Unwittingly, Carver ends up embroiled in the Simon Says games with McClane, with increasingly serious stakes. Just who is Simon? Why is he toying with McClane?

I should note that I was predisposed to like this film. I like Bruce Willis a lot, but I especially love Samuel L. Jackson. The combination of the two here is simply magical. They have remarkable chemistry and the characters that scriptwriter Jonathan Hensleigh has drawn enable both deep tension and hilarious comic moments between the two.

Perhaps the best way to describe the third segment in the popular Die Hard series is by comparing it to the previous two. That should give an adequate assessment of how far the adventures of John McClane (Bruce Willis) have fallen. The original Die Hard took place in the confined space of a high rise building. The first sequel widened the field to an airport. This one zigs and zags all across New York City. Apparently, the greater the scope, the less engaging the movie. Then there's the character of Holly McClane, played with warmth and appeal by Bonnie Bedelia. She and John had a lot of interaction in the original. In part two, they were separated by the few thousand feet, but she was still there, circling Dulles International Airport in a plane low on fuel. In Die Hard with a Vengeance, Holly is nowhere to be seen. These things, amongst larger issues (like script quality), help explain why the second Die Hard wasn't quite as good as the first, and why this installment doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the 1988 and 1990 episodes.

When formulating a sequel, the film makers should attempt to recapture the style of their movie's predecessor without regurgitating specific plot twists. While Die Hard with a Vengeance transpires in a vastly different setting than the first, that doesn't prevent it from shameless pilfering. One chief "surprise" this time around is nearly identical to an element of the original. There are also fragments borrowed liberally from the likes of Speed and Blown Away (not surprising, considering that those pictures, like this one, deal with mad bombers). And, of course, coming in the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy, there are times when the explosive excesses of this film seem in bad taste, even though it was in the can long before that April morning.

In the first two Die Hards, John McClane was an ordinary Joe caught in extraordinary circumstances -- a hard-working cop trying to save the lives of his wife and whole lot of other people on Christmas Eve. Now, McClane is one step from alcoholism, Holly is living on the opposite coast, and it's the middle of the summer. There's a guy out there called Simon (Jeremy Irons) bombing buildings, and he wants to play a game of "Simon Says" with McClane. Each time he gives an instruction, it has to be carried out or some new target will be blown to smithereens. Along the way, McClane picks up an ally in a Harlem shop owner named Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson), who gets involved when he saves McClane from a street gang. Simon makes Zeus part of the cat-and-mouse game which turns into a wild goose chase. There's a bomb in one of over 1400 New York schools, and it's up to McClane to find out which one.

John McTiernan, the director of the first Die Hard, is a great crafter of action sequences. All the explosions and fights are filmed with consummate skill, and are thrilling in their own right. But that's where it stops. The pacing is erratic and the level of tension ebbs and flows. While parts one and two built momentum to an exhausting, exhilarating climax, part three has too many peaks and valleys (and, it seems, more of the latter than the former). Worst of all, the hero doesn't have to be John McClane. It could be any hungover cop able to utter a few, widely-spaced one-liners.