Movie Review: Die Hard with a Vengence

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Plenty of great action and decent plot

Cons: Some dated elements

The Bottom Line:

Strong action and plot

Make this a movie you won't

Want to stop watching

"I Didn't Say Park Drive.  I Said the Park."

By the time you come to the third movie in a series, it can often become predictable.  Maybe that's one reason why I found Die Hard: With a Vengeance so refreshing.  Gone is the Christmas setting and terrorists in one isolated location.  But it's still a fun roller coaster ride.

The only character returning from the first two movies is John McClane (Bruce Willis).  He's separate from his wife (in a plot point that doesn't quite seem to make sense) and suspended from the NYPD for his alcohol abuse.

All that changes when a bomber strikes the city and asks specifically for McClane.  Calling himself Simon (Jeremy Irons), he leads McClane on a wild goose chase all around the city doing strange tasks to keep more bombs from blowing up.  Along the way, McClane gets an unlikely partner in Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson), a shop keeper.  Why is Simon focused on McClane?  Will McClane be able to stop the bombs?  And what is Simon really after?

It was really nice to see McClane actually working with law enforcement this time around.  Even so, the movie still manages to keep McClane pretty much on his own.  Yes, he has Zeus, but McClane is the one driving the story forward.

As with the others, there are some decent twists to the plot.  Yes, the plot is just an excuse for the action, but it holds some surprises and is fairly logical.  The finale is a bit far fetched, but this is an action movie, so I'll give it a pass.

And the action segments are wonderful as always.  The movie literally starts with a bang and the tension doesn't stop until the end.

The acting is uniformly great.  Bruce Willis certainly has his character down, and it shows.  Samuel L. Jackson brings a humanness to his character and the movie that it would have been missing otherwise.  Jeremy Irons is a wonderfully diabolical villain.  From the rest of the cast, I was most interested in Sam Phillips who plays the mute Katya since she used to be a Christian singer in the 80's.

Speaking of the 80's, this movie was made in 1995, so it's not quite as dated as the first two in the series.  Yes, it still shows that it is almost 30 years old, mostly in the special effects and technology shown on screen.  Still, these are minor issues in the film.

I watched this one from TV, and it cut out the swearing.  Frankly, I didn't miss it, although there was enough silence to know there was plenty of it.  I'm sure some violence was cut out as well, although what was left was still pretty violent.

There are enough differences to make this movie exciting, but at the core, Die Hard: With a Vengeance is still a Die Hard movie.  And if you like action, that's a good thing.