Retro Film Review: Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995)

There are plenty of people who have good reasons to hate terrorists, and American filmmaker John McTiernan is one of them. In 1993 his film The Last Action Hero had to have its publicity campaign redesigned because of the first WTC bombing. Two years later, McTiernan's film Die Hard: With a Vengeance, the third instalment in the series started by 1988 Die Hard, suffered at the box-office because the US public after Oklahoma City bombing didn't appreciate a plot dealing with mad bomber blowing half of New York City. Today, after New York has suffered even worse terrorist outrage in real life, watching of Die Hard: With a Vengeance is probably unbearable for American audience.

The protagonist of third Die Hard film is still New York policeman John McLane (played by Bruce Willis), reluctant hero who always happens to land in the wrong place at the wrong time, wreck various terrorist schemes and saves his family in the process. This time McLane is in worse shape than in previous two films - wife left him, he had started to drink, and, as result, is expected to be kicked out of NYPD. His career is, at least temporarily, rescued by a terrorist who targeted McLane himself - after the series of bombings all over New York City, police receives a call by someone who calls himself Simon (played by Jeremy Irons) and wants to play game with the detective. McLane must complete the series of bizarre and often life-threatening tasks, and Simon would in exchange give the locations of various explosive devices scattered all over New York City. McLane is in his quest joined by black storeowner Zeus (played by Samuel L. Jackson) and two of them slowly discover the true motive of Simon's actions and diabolical plan that lies behind the whole mayhem.

Seeing that Die Hard created whole new sub-genre of action films, McTiernan and his scriptwriter Jonathan Hensleigh not only abandoned the Die Hard formula, but also turned it upside down. Instead of having action at a single, usually claustrophobic location, they scatter it all over town and forcing protagonists to rush from one location to another. This was an excellent opportunity for numerous exciting and breath-taking action scenes in which McTiernan again showed his great talent for this brand of filmmaking. For a while, viewers are so overwhelmed with spectacular on-screen action that they forget the fact that the main character is reduced to cardboard cut-out of himself, at least compared to two previous films. Some supporting characters are much better, though - Samuel L. Jackson brings a lot of "buddy buddy" dynamic to the relationship between Zeus and McLane, while British actor Jeremy Irons obviously has a lot of fun playing suave and deadly villain, although he can't compete with Alan Rickman in the first film. Unfortunately, the film looses pace in the last segments, the action, albeit spectacular, is rather predictable and the film nearly collapses in the finale. The ending, that could have been perfect with Bad Guys winning (and thus leaving the room for further sequels and providing McLane with adequate arch-rival), is totally uninspiring and lacks any kind of catharsis seen in previous two films. However, although Die Hard: With a Vengeance represents a huge disappointment for all those who had expected high standards of original film (and even compared to 1990 sequel), it is still a good example of a talented action director displaying his talents in an entertaining way. It is a shame that for millions of people this film is not as entertaining as it was only five weeks ago.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on October 15th 2001)

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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1572-die-hard-with-a-vengeance?language=en-US
Critic: AA