OK-doke now I'm onto the 3rd installment of the Die Hard posts, which covers Die Hard with a vengeance, the 3rd film funnily enough in the Die Hard franchise. So here is a fair bit more on that and the plot....
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 show them pictures of a few men, asking them to identify them, but they soon 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, who is spotted by Simon's men, and Simon gives them instructions to kill McClane. McClane getting into a lift with Simon's men soon spots, that one of the men, has taken the police badge 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. Right enough Simon's team have indeed gone to the border town and the gold has been loaded safely onto the dump tracks. However soon enough McClane arrives in a chopper with the Canadian police, to face down his enemy for the final time.
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!). 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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