OK now onto the 3rd installment of the Die Hard posts, which
covers Die Hard with a vengeance, which saw the return of John McTiernan to the directorial helm. So here is more on that and the plot.... (please forgive the long plot summary!)
The
film begins with a bomb going off in New York Manhattan at the Bonwitt
Teller department store during a hot summer morning. The NYPD receive a
call from a mysterious caller that uses the phrase "Simon says" and
asks for John McClane (Bruce Willis of course!), who at this time is on
suspension of duty. The caller insists that John McClane get to Harlem
and wear a sandwich board, or else, the caller will set off another
bomb. The major case unit inspector Walter Cobb (Larry Bryggman) of the
NYPD goes and talks with McClane and tells them that he must do as
"Simon" says, so McClane has no choice but to wear the sandwich board
which says "I hate niggers" on it. On walking through the streets of
Harlem, a local shop owner and electrician Zeus Carver (Samuel
L.Jackson) spots McClane and tells him to get out of there, but as
McClane explains what he is doing, a local gang spot him and attack him,
but Zeus manages to grab McClane's gun and they escape the scene in a
taxi, back to the police station. Back at the station, the police have
found that "Simon" has stolen thousands of gallons of bi-chemical agent
explosive. Simon then calls again and speaks with McClane and insists
that he and Zeus go on a series of games of games in order to prevent
him from detonating more bombs. McClane reluctantly manages to get Zeus
to go along with him, and their first port of call is trying to prevent
a bomb going off in one of the New York subways, which McClane barely
gets there in time, finding the bomb in one of the carriages of a subway
train, he throws it out the window and it blows up just in time before
destroying the train.
Soon after this, McClane and Zeus
are taken to meet two FBI agents, who explain that the mysterious
caller is in fact the brother of Hans Gruber, the villain from the first
Die Hard, and his real name is Simon Peter Gruber (Jeremy Irons). At
this point Simon calls again and tells them he has planted another bomb
in one of the schools in the city, and that McClane and Zeus are to
solve more puzzles in order to find the location of the bomb. After the
two men find a bomb in one of the parks, they disarm it and take it
away, afterwards McClane spots a kid cycling away from a store, having
stolen some food and stops him, where the kid says "Look at this place,
there is no one here, the cops are into something, its like Christmas,
you could steal City Hall!". At this point McClane realises something
is up and it dawns on him that this is actually been all about a heist,
as Simon and his men, are in actual fact there to steal the gold bullion
from the Federal Reserve Bank. So Simon and his team, disguised as
policeman and construction workers, enter the bank and kill or
incapacitate the security guards inside, and break into the bank vault,
and use dump trucks to load up the gold. McClane soon after enters the
bank, and meets with Simon's men, posing as cops, he enters a lift with them and notices one of the men wears the police badge from one of the dead
NYPD officers, and kills the men in the lift. McClane thereafter finds
one of the remaining bars of gold and with Zeus they go after the trucks
and follow them to tanker, which they board, but are captured by Simon
and his men.
Meanwhile the NYPD have been distracted by
the choas of finding the school and through McClane's help they have
found that the school in question is the Chester A. Arthur school, where
the police indeed find a big bomb, with two big cylinders of the
chemical agent, that the police found earlier. As the bomb counts down,
the police evacuate the school, while their bomb expert Charlie Weiss
(Kevin Chamberlin) tries to cut the wires to deactivate the bomb,
however as he does, the cylinders simply leak out, what is in actual
fact pancake syrup. On the tanker, McClane at this point realises the
bomb is only a decoy, and Simon finds him and tells him that there was
no bomb in the school, but the real bomb is on the tanker. Simon then
cuffs McClane and Zeus sitting on the bomb's cylinders, leaving them to
be killed in the explosion, the tanker supposedly filled with the gold
will sink. However McClane and Zeus soon manage to escape, just before
the bomb detonates and destroys the ship. McClane having been given a
bottle aspirin (as he has been suffering a bad hangover throughout the
film!) by Simon before he departed, finds it has the name of the
Canadian bordertown where Simon's team have presumably gone to, giving McClane the lead he needs to find Gruber and end it once and for all.
Die Hard with a vengeance is a very
enjoyable entry in the franchise, and it sees the series get back on
track after the rather disappointing Die Hard 2. The film is also
helped along by a very enjoyable and somewhat hammy performance from its
villain, Simon Gruber, played by Jeremy Irons, who in a way is the
perfect choice for the role, as he is very similar in manner to Alan
Rickman. And his character makes for a refreshing take on the Gruber
family, and is a far more entertaining a villain than the very cut and
dry Colonel Stuart from the second film, although my one criticism of
his performance is he gives the worst ever phoney American accent (in
the one scene he uses it!). In fact he delivers one of the film's corniest lines using his Yank accent down at the Federeal reserve bank "holy Toledo! Somebody had fun!". I also quite like the fact Simon isn't
really portrayed as monsterous villain, his idea to plant the bomb in
the school was just a ruse, and at one point even gives Zeus a chance to
be let go, rather than be killed by his men, as he realises he was just
an innocent guy who got caught up in his scheme. He also clearly isn't
too keen on unecessary killing in the film as well, as he clearly is
shown as incapacitating most of the guards in the bank, and when his
blood thirstry girlfriend Katya (Sam Phillips) viciously stabs the last
remaining guard in the bank, he grabs her hand forcefully, stopping her
from doing more damage to the dead man, and says "I think he's dead my
dear".
The other character of course which makes it
so enjoyable is Zeus Carver, played by Samuel L.Jackson, who almost
comes across like he is some kind of militant black man who has a
mistrust of white people. Samuel also gets most of the best dialogue in
the film, I especially like his line where he says to McClane about his
name "My name is Zeus, not Jesus! Like the father Apollo, Mount
Olympus, don't fuck with me or I'll shove a lightning bolt up your ass!
Zeus!!". Although Zeus of course appears to some kind of racist
towards white people (which I guess he isn't really) he does form a good
relationship with McClane as the film goes along, and there is no doubt
that Bruce and Samuel share a really good onscreen chemistry with one
another. And Bruce Willis does a fine job as John McClane, and he is
perhaps at his most likeable in this film, as he has a good down to
earth way with people, acting as a police officer and being polite with
the public, even in extreme situations.
One thing
they have sorted out in a way in Die Hard with a vengeance is their
attempts to no longer make the police force look as stupid as they did
in the first two films. And the police characters are all quite well
drawn, particularly Inspector Cobb and Joe Lambert, one of the
detectives in the film, played very well by Graham Greene. Here the
cops are actually fairly smart and they show that they can do their job
well, and they aren't all bungling idiots like they were portrayed in
Die Hard and Die Hard 2. Perhaps there is a little bit too much inane
chatter among the cops at times in the film, but it definitely is an
improvement from the first two films. Its also good to see McClane at
work in his own town, as opposed to being in LA or in Dulles Washington,
where he is a stranger and has no jurisdiction (not that the word meant
much to him anyway!).
My only niggles about the film
however probably are first off, the ending of the film is very silly,
with McClane going after Gruber the way he does, and how he interrupts
Gruber who is about to have it off with his girlfriend and says "Hey,
dickhead, did I come at a bad time???" from a megaphone in a chopper.
Its also pretty daft as the writer of the screenplay, Johnathan
Hensleigh pointed out in the DVD commentary, that Zeus would come along
with McClane in the chopper ride, as he really isn't needed, but I guess
maybe Zeus wanted to see it through to the end as well. Another
criticism I have is the scene with the police psychologist explaining
the psychosis of "Simon" and how "we are talking about a pyschopathic
personality, with possible schizophrenia, and he wants control over
McClane, and his actions". Its just really feels superflous to the
whole film, and unecessary exposition, we don't really need a
psychologist to explain all this stuff as its something we can all
pretty much work out for ourselves, even McClane knows what Simon is all
about without the help of the "shrink".
Music wise the
film is well catered for as Michael Kame provides another good score
for the film, and adds a few extra new passages to the already well
established Die Hard score, he also incorporates "When Johnny Comes Home
Marching", into the film quite alot as well (you will know it as soon
as you hear it). The start of the film is also really good, and is
perhaps the best beginning of all the Die Hard films, as it has the New
York backdrop and the great song "Summer in the city" by The Lovin
Spoonful playing in the background, which is used to perfection here,
right up until the moment where the first bomb goes off at Bonwitt
Tellers.
But Die Hard with a vengeance is a very
entertaining film and worth a watch if you haven't already seen it and
with John McTiernan at the directorial helm once again it makes for a
worthy inclusion to the series.
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