Die Hard - Duri a morire

Die Hard With A Vengence is a near-perfect summer movie. This franchise effort is a gleeful no-brainer with nonstop action. It gives some additional perverse pleasure, as we get to watch smartypants Bruce Willis get smacked around for 112 minutes. In this third outing with John McClane, we are faced with yet another mad bomber on the loose. Jeremy Irons plays Simon, a nasty piece of Eurotrash who has a score to settle with Detective McClane. Simon's bombing game comes complete with crafty riddles, which must be solved in a specified time or everything goes boom. McClane has no choice but to play. Along the way, he picks up an unlikely accomplice named Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson), a Harlem shopkeeper. Together they tear all over New York trying to head off disaster. Sure, it's all perfectly preposterous, but DIE HARD 3 has been directed with breathless intensity by John McTiernan, who certainly has a way with wrecking things. Was he very destructive as a child? Loved the spectacular subway crash, John. That hair-raising taxi ride through Central Park wasn't bad, either. Don't forget to fasten your seat belts for this ride.

The movie starts off by re-introducing John McClane, and immediately takes off with non-stop action. Samuel L Jackson has great chemistry with Willis, and they really work with each other. Even thought the movie was made almost 20 years ago, due to the dependence on mainly practical effects, it still looks good.

The one major downfall of the movie was the ending. It is too bad, since that is what the viewer will remember. It could have been easily re- mediated if they went with a less typical Hollywood-type ending, and that would also have been in line with everything else in the movie. Also, the water riddle was solved way too easily by John, and the editing of it didn't even show how he randomly arrived at the answer.

I like this one about as much as I like the first one. The first one had a better plot and was more tense, but this one moves at a very fast rate and it seems like it is over before it begins. A vast improvement over part two, this movie once again finds McClane in the middle of an emergency situation. This time, unlike part two, though it is very reasonable that he is involved as Irons character is the brother of the lead villain of the first Die Hard. Throw in a very funny Samuel L Jacksoncharacter and you have the makings of a great film action wise andcomedy wise too. This one centers around a mad bomber, threatening to blow up several places including a school if officer McClane does not play the game. McClane must do whatever the bomber says and boy does the bomber do a lot to get our hero down. Great action is a given as our hero desperately must try to find the bombs. Multiple car scenes a cool scene on a boat, and loads and loads of gold thrown in for an exciting ride. Irons is great as the villain, as was Rickman in the first one. Truly this is one fast moving ride that will keep you well entertained throughout.

This is definitely the grittiest of all the 3 Die Hard films. John Mclane is now a drunk, he's separated from his family, living in New York, and to make matters worse a terrorist calling himself "Simon" is out for revenge on Mclane. Mclane, and everyone else, has absolutely no idea why.

The first 2 films are superior to this one since this has a lot of changes from the mood that made the others so great. First off, it's not set on Christmas. No biggie though. Secondly, there are too many complications and twists to the plot. You almost have to take notes. And thirdly, the biggest change is that it's now turned into a buddy movie to the style of Lethal Weapon, since Samuel L. Jackson as Zeus unwillingly teams up with John Mclane. They're complete opposites, they argue, and they become friends. That sort of stuff.

Die Hard: With A Vengeance still stays true to it's amazing action scenes, though. There's plenty of explosions, there's floods, and overall general destruction. It's a different kind of movie, yes. But it's a good different kind of movie.

My rating: 9/10

Someone calling himself Simon detonates several bombs in the centre of New York City. He then sets a series of dangerous tasks for Officer John McClane to achieve or he will detonate more. McClane sets out to meet the demands of the terrorists with bystander Zeus Carver in tow.

This is the third in the Die Hard series and it makes an immediate improvement on the second by bringing back the original director John McTiernan. Here the film doesn't try to repeat the formula of the first film (terrorists/wife/rescue) but instead takes on a whole new plot while still tying it into the first film. The second movie tried to repeat the first film's plot but set in an airport, here the different angle makes this feel a lot fresher and feel like a movie in itself. The tie-in to the first film is clever and not too much of a stretch of the imagination - happily this is not the reason for the action itself - instead the terrorist's main aim is the gold held in vaults in the Federal Reserve on Wall Street, but the game with McClane is a special treat.

McTiernan was great in the first film, making everything feel tense and claustrophobic. Here he has the whole of NYC to run across and the camera shows this new found freedom. In action scenes the camera swings wildly round and zooms into focus on the action. During scenes set in offices etc containing a lot of dialogue the camera slowly prowls round like it's dieing to rush off to the next action scene. It's the opposite to the style in the first film and again makes this feels different enough to be a film in it's own right.

Usually film series can get a lot of baggage (watch Lethal Weapon 4 for proof), but here all the repeat characters are dropped, even McClane's wife only features as a voice on the phone. And that works well here and the only characters that are brought back here are McClane (of course) and Hans Gruber (in a flashback). This frees the film up to basically go where it wants without having to squeeze in old characters the way the second film did. However it links the films by having Simon Gruber taking supposed revenge for the death of his brother. The fresh active feel to this movie really gives it life and lifts the series out of the hole that the second film had threatened to put it.

The chemistry between Willis and Jackson is great and lends a lot of comedy to the film, there's lot of racial humour between the two and Jackson is more than the "black sidekick" that exists in many films. Irons continues the fine tradition of English actors playing Hollywood villains and is good for the most. His ticks and stutters stop him being anywhere near as good as Rickman was in the original role but he's still good. Willis gets good support from the likes of Graham Greene, Larry Bryggman and Colleen Camp as fellow cops but really him and Jackson carry the show.

Some of the scenes are a little forced and the plot doesn't always join together easily (a scene where Willis is fired out of a water pipe just as Jackson happens to drive by is a little too convenient) but many iffy bits can be overlooked if you focus on the action. The most effective thing that returns from the first film is the musical score. In the first film the score used variations on Christmas music to dramatic effect, here the score uses music well to add tension and comedy in a different way. It's difficult to put into words but this effect was missing from the second film.

The film has a hatful of nice twists towards the end and the only problem is that the conclusion in Canada doesn't feel like it fits in (the original ending was changed following the Okalahoma bombing) but this is a minor problem in a film that is a great addition to the action packed Die Hard series.