I don’t have air conditioning in my car. This makes commuting rather uncomfortable especially last week as a blistering heat wave across the country produced temperatures in the 100s. See the images on the top and side of this post? Click one and help Puck have AC. Anyways, on insanely hot days, I almost always think of Die Hard with a Vengeance as it is a movie that almost makes you sweat from the heat atop the New York City streets. Let’s disregard that a lot of the film was made in South Carolina. But I’m rambling now, so let’s get on with the review.
When I reviewed Die Hard some time ago, it had been a while since seeing it. Thus, I was captivated at the sheer brilliance of it all, not just for a “mindless” action film, but because it is a damn solid story that pretty much built all the action movie tropes still in use today. It’s second sequel though, DHWAV for short, gives Hollywood a damn fine template for creating a action sequel that is not downright insulting to the viewer (cough… Speed 2).
In his review of this film, Roger Ebert lamented that while movies of previous years were satisfied with one or two major action scenes, “now there are movies that are essentially nothing but sensational stunt sequences.” While a smidgeon of action may have met the audience’s expectations a few decades ago, everything is bigger, badder, and louder in our constant struggle to outdo our predecessors. That is where movies like Salt come in with a huge disparity between dialogue and action to the detriment of the former. DHWAV isn’t as reflective or character driven as the original blockbuster that spawned it but it sure makes up for that it balls-to-the-wall action that is the pinnacle of “edge-of-your-seat” cinema.
Writer Jonathan Hensleigh reportedly developed the story as a standalone film and only later was it tweaked to fit in with the Die Hard franchise. Compare that to Die Hard 2, which sucks because it is a shameless retread of the original. Right off the bat, that fixes a number of problems with the second. In this one, John McClane (Bruce Willis) is obviously back, but he is now in New York again, separated again and just shy of being kicked off the police force. When after the second did McClane and Holly start feuding again? Why is he on suspension now (surely, his loose cannon persona would have come forward by now)? How many hours a day does McClane watch Captain Kangaroo? These pressing questions are not even address here, but they aren’t even asked. Perhaps as a way of divorcing the film from the lackluster previous entry, you really need to know nothing going into this film other than there was a first movie called Die Hard.
Sure, there is the fact that Simon (Jeremy Irons) is the brother of the first film’s villain that may be nice to know. But it’s hardly required since the revenge angle is quickly dropped by the antagonist himself. Instead, Simon is the best/worst example of a mercenary: he is perturbed that McClane took his brother skydiving without a parachute but he really just wants the billions of dollars in gold located at the NY Fed branch. Simon has intricate and sometimes scary objectives for McClane, but only to get him out of the way, nothing more. And Hensleigh’s script works so well because the scenes of McClane and Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson) bickering back and forth while solving the riddles are mostly extraneous but they add much more to the story than most films of this genre do.
Yes, it can be said that Jackson plays the same loud-mouthed character in every film and this one is no exception. But Zeus is such a fun character with his insights, his yelling, and his racist-radar (racar?) that make him an endearing character with a real arc as he goes from angry bystander, to angry unwilling participant, to angry hero. Reginald VelJohnson‘s presence is not missed. And Willis seems to have been phoning in the same performance for a number of years but here he proves that McClane is an action hero along the lines of … well, McClane is his own breed of smart-ass, tough-as-nails NYPD cop. Sometime between the original and this film, McClane has become supercop who can manage to be everywhere when he needs to, get out of impossible situations unscathed, and always save the day. It is a departure from the relatively humble McClane from the first but, oh well. I’m sure Die Hard 2 was the cause of that.
Regardless of the almost non-existent factual basis for the story, the action, or the horrific “German” spoken in the movie, returning director John McTiernan is able to pack in so much that there really is no time to process any of the quips. Once the beginning credits end, the movie starts with a bang and does not let up until the end, save for the scenes between McClane and Zeus early on which add a needed sense of levity. It’s a shame that McTiernan has not done much recently (likely due to some … legal issues) since his resume is much less checkered that other renowned directors. The man knows how to make an action film click and has a method which make even the expected (since I have seen this movie far more than I care to admit) still worrisome as it is ongoing.
With such a strong story and action sequences, Die Hard with a Vengeance could likely have been over three hours without growing tiresome. The ending is a bit of a letdown since it seems so pedestrian and separate from the rest of the film. That ending though is allegedly a tacked-on studio demand but even it’s presence does not diminish the greatness of this movie. The first Die Hard is a classic in its own right and easily in the top 3 action movies ever made. DHWAV is damn close to matching its excellence, even in its own way.
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