Die Hard with a Vengeance
From AwardAnnals
| This creative work has a long or truncated description. Please review the creative work guidelines concerning descriptions and edit down or replace the description. |
 | |
| Director(s) | John McTiernan |
|---|---|
| Distributor | 20th Century Fox |
| Honors | |
| The second sequel to the mold-making action film Die Hard brings Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) to New York City to face a better villain than in Die Hard 2. Played by Jeremy Irons, he’s the brother of the Germanic terrorist-thief Alan Rickman played in the original film. But this bad guy has his sights set higher: on the Federal Reserve’s cache of gold. As a distraction, he sets McClane running fool’s errands all over New York—and eventually, McClane attracts an unintentional partner, a Harlem dry cleaner (Samuel L. Jackson) with a chip on… | |
Reviews
Amazon.com
The second sequel to the mold-making action film Die Hard brings Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) to New York City to face a better villain than in Die Hard 2. Played by Jeremy Irons, he’s the brother of the Germanic terrorist-thief Alan Rickman played in the original film. But this bad guy has his sights set higher: on the Federal Reserve’s cache of gold. As a distraction, he sets McClane running fool’s errands all over New York—and eventually, McClane attracts an unintentional partner, a Harlem dry cleaner (Samuel L. Jackson) with a chip on his shoulder. Some great action sequences, though they can’t obscure the rather large plot holes in the film’s final 45 minutes. —Marshall Fine
Barnes and Noble
Bruce Willis and John McTiernan—the star-director team that established an often imitated action-movie blueprint with 1988’s Die Hard—reunited for this explosive, thrill-a-minute 1995 sequel. Willis reprises the role of tough, taciturn cop John McClane, playing cat-and-mouse yet again with a vicious terrorist. In a nod to the original film, the sadistic madman tormenting McClane is Simon Gruber (Jeremy Irons), brother to the character played by Alan Rickman in Die Hard, who’s out to avenge his sibling’s death at the cop’s hands. With bombs planted in schools all over New York, Gruber sends McClane on a succession of fool’s errands before implementing the plan calculated to ensure his revenge. Although the Willis character fought alone in the first two Die Hard films, McTiernan gives him a reluctant sidekick in the ubiquitous Samuel L. Jackson, here playing a Harlem shopkeeper caught up in the terrorist’s game. The Willis-Jackson bickering gives Vengeance a Lethal Weapon feel and offers viewers a few seconds to catch their breath between suspenseful action set pieces. The episodic plotline and driving pace is reminiscent of an old cliff-hanger serial, and like those continued-next-week thrillers of yore, Die Hard with a Vengeance will keep you perched on the edge of your chair. The new two-disc Five-Star Edition offers a commentary by McTiernan, an interview with Willis, two TV specials about the film, a making-of featurette, behind-the-scenes vignettes, a sequence shown in storyboard form, and special-effects breakdowns, plus various trailers and TV spots. Ed Hulse
Find this film
Related works
Bruce Willi stars as New York City Detective John McClane, newly arrived in Los Angeles to spend the Christmas holiday with his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia). But as Mclane waits for his wife’s office party to break up, terrorist take control of the building. While the terrorist leader, Hans gruber (Alexander Godunov) round up hostages, McClane slips away unnoticed. Armed with only a service revolver and his cunning, McClane launches his own one-man war. A crackling thriller from beginning to end, Die Hard explodes with heart-stopping suspense.
“The best of the best is back and better than ever” (WNYW-TV) in the latest installment of the pulse-pounding, thrill-a-minute Die Hard action films. New York City detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) delivers old-school justice to a new breed of terrorists when a massive computer attack on the U.S. infrastructure threatens to shut down the entire country over Independence Day weekend.
